The Catholic Spirit - January 23, 2025

January 23, 2025 • Newspaper of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis

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Catholic Schools Week See coverage inside

MCC LEGISLATIVE PREVIEW 5 | CATHOLIC SCHOOL STALWARTS 7 | BISHOP OF KYIV 9 HOUSES IN SCHOOLS 10-11 | ISRAEL-HAMAS CEASEFIRE 14 | STUDENT’S LEGACY 20

2 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

JANUARY 23, 2025

PAGETWO An economy that kills, that excludes, that starves, that concentrates enormous wealth in a few to the detriment of many, that multiplies poverty and grinds down salaries, that pollutes, that produces war, is not an economy.

Pope Francis in “Hope: The Autobiography” a 300-page volume that covers the pope’s life, family, vocation and papal election, as well as many of his thoughts and reflections regarding past events and current issues, particularly the exploitation and destruction of human life and creation.

NEWS notes

DAVE HRBACEK | THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

HELP AND BLESSINGS Archbishop Bernard Hebda, right, helps assemble sets of clothes during a volunteer event for employees of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis Jan. 17 at Guiding Star Wakota in West St. Paul. In addition to pitching in with other employees, including Theresa Matelski, left, Archbishop Hebda blessed various parts of the building during a tour. Providing guidance in the clothes sorting was Moriah Lippert, center, client advocate who speaks English and Spanish.

St. Mary’s University of Minnesota, with primary campuses in Winona and Minneapolis, is offering free tuition beginning in the spring semester to new, incoming students who are dependent children of faculty and staff employed by Catholic elementary and high schools across Minnesota. Through its donor-funded Catholic Educator Promise, eligible students will receive a “last dollar” grant that covers the remaining tuition costs for four years of study after all other scholarships and grants. “As a Lasallian Catholic institution, St. Mary’s is deeply committed to supporting those who dedicate their lives to the formation of young minds in Catholic education,” said Father James Burns, the university’s president, in a news release. “The Catholic Educator Promise reflects our unwavering belief in the transformative power of education and our mission to extend that opportunity to the families of those who serve in Catholic grade, middle and high schools.”

Sophomores at DeLaSalle High School in Minneapolis were recognized by their school on a Facebook post Jan. 8, for their work in the community this school year. The post said the class of 2027 volunteered roughly 700 hours with 16 different community partners during their theology class.

Christian Howlett and Dominic Wolters — of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis — were among 34 seminarians Archbishop John Kennedy formally installed in the ministry of lector on Jan. 12 in Rome. Archbishop Kennedy, secretary of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, told the seminarians gathered in the Chapel of the Immaculate Conception at the Pontifical North American College that “by the faithfulness and commitment in your proclamation of the word of God, the faithful will come to know how strongly you yourself believe in the word that you proclaim.” He placed the holy Scriptures in each candidate’s hands as part of the rite. The seminarians are in formation for the priesthood and represent 24 dioceses and archdioceses in the United States.

People gearing up for the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade in downtown St. Paul March 17 can start with 9:30 a.m. Mass at the Cathedral of St. Paul. The Ancient Order of Hibernians is inviting everyone to Mass in honor of St. Patrick and to refreshments afterward in the Cathedral basement. The parade starts a mile away at Rice Park at noon.

As parishes and offices in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis implement year two of Archbishop Bernard Hebda’s 2022 pastoral letter, “You Will Be My Witnesses: Gathered and Sent From the Upper Room,” Mary, Mother of the Church in Burnsville is offering a 12-part series on the Mass. The archbishop is encouraging the faithful this year to learn more about the Mass and the Eucharist. Offered in Mary, Mother of the Church’s bulletin, its Thursday Parish email, its website at mmotc.org and even projection slides, the weekly series began Jan. 19 and runs through April 6. It includes parishioners involved in the parish’s Synod Team and Liturgy Commission sharing a summary of each part of the Mass, emphasizing its beauty, form and meaning, and encouraging active participation in the liturgy.

COURTESY AMANDA LUTES | ST. KATHARINE DREXEL

NEW CHURCH Father Paul Jaroszeski speaks to the congregation gathered for Christmas Mass Dec. 25, 2024, in St. Katharine Drexel’s new building in Ramsey. After the parish sold 18 of over 33 acres it had acquired through a donation, 15 acres were left for a new church construction site. Construction work took place last year, following a groundbreaking ceremony in June. “Thank you to everyone who joined together to celebrate Christmas Masses in our new parish home!” a message in the parish’s Jan. 5 bulletin read.

PRACTICING Catholic Produced by Relevant Radio and the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, the Jan. 17 “Practicing Catholic” radio show featured a discussion with Bishop Michael Izen on how to maintain the spirit of Christmas after the season ends, and an interview with Rachel Hastreiter on her faith-filled journey from Minnesota to California. The program also included a talk with Madeline Larson, a grant coordinator for Epiphany Caring for Life, on how visio divina helps us seek God. Listen to interviews after they have aired at archspm.org/faith-and-discipleship/practicing-catholic or choose a streaming platform at Spotify for Podcasters.

The Catholic Spirit is published semi-monthly for The Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis Vol. 30 — No. 2 MOST REVEREND BERNARD A. HEBDA, Publisher TOM HALDEN, Associate Publisher JOE RUFF, Editor-in-Chief REBECCA OMASTIAK, News Editor

Jason Adkins, executive director and general counsel of the Minnesota Catholic Conference, is hosting a national podcast exploring faithful citizenship in the United States.

Through the podcast, Adkins is engaging with important voices in the public square to explore the tensions, challenges and opportunities of being “Catholic in America.” Offered at osvpodcasts.com through Huntington, Indiana-based Our Sunday Visitor (OSV), Adkins’ podcast began last November and opened with an episode describing its focus and intent.

Three more segments have been released so far exploring issues of faith and the nation’s health care system. Find the podcast at catholicinamericaosvpodcasts.com. In addition, OSV News, Our Sunday Visitor’s Catholic news service, is carrying columns by Adkins exploring similar themes.

ON THE COVER Lynn Wright, parent-student liaison at St. Peter Claver Catholic School in St. Paul, hugs kindergartners Ivan Sellers, left, Dream Woodall and Avianne Atkins Jan. 10 at the school. See page 7 for a feature story about Wright, plus stories about two other longtime school employees: Dave Johnson of St. Raphael Catholic School in Crystal and Mike Jeremiah of Benilde-St. Margaret’s in St. Louis Park.

DAVE HRBACEK | THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

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JANUARY 23, 2025

THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT • 3

FROMTHEBISHOP ONLY JESUS | BISHOP MICHAEL IZEN

Catholic schools form scholars, disciples, servants and leaders

I

know I speak for Archbishop Hebda when I tell you how grateful we are for our wonderful Catholic schools here in the archdiocese. In my first 18 years of priesthood, I was blessed to have a Catholic school with each parish assignment. I enjoyed those days so much, and then this whole “bishop thing” happened! Now, what I suspected all along is being confirmed. During those 18 years I enjoyed great Catholic schools, but only one at a time. As a bishop I am seeing firsthand that we have 80 great Catholic grade schools and 16 great Catholic high schools in our archdiocese.

The role of these schools is to form scholars, disciples and servant leaders. I’m stealing that from one of my former school’s mission statements, but it seems like a pretty darn good approach. We have amazing teachers in this archdiocese who work on all of these categories –– forming scholars, disciples, servants and leaders? As a parish priest I was blessed to assist especially in the category of forming disciples, and let me tell you, evangelization has never been so fun!

The many forums for evangelization with our school children include the school Mass, Eucharistic adoration, Eucharistic processions, sacramental preparation (especially confession, Communion and confirmation), and Scripture reflections.

Formation happens at Mass, but it also happens in the classroom, the lunchroom and even on the playground.

Second grade is a great age for engaging kids about the faith. I think the Church knows what she’s doing as we typically use this year to prepare for both first reconciliation and first holy Communion. Second grade is popularly thought of as when our kids reach

Las escuelas católicas forman estudiantes, discípulos, servidores y líderes

S

é que hablo en nombre del arzobispo Hebda cuando les digo lo agradecidos que estamos por nuestras maravillosas escuelas católicas aquí en la archidiócesis. En mis primeros 18 años de sacerdocio, tuve la bendición de tener una escuela católica en cada parroquia asignada. Disfruté mucho esos días, ¡y luego sucedió todo este asunto del “obispo”! Ahora, lo que sospeché desde el principio se está confirmando. Durante esos 18 años disfruté de excelentes escuelas católicas, pero solo una a la vez. Como obispo, estoy viendo de primera mano que tenemos 80 excelentes escuelas primarias católicas y 16 excelentes escuelas secundarias católicas en nuestra archidiócesis.

El papel de estas escuelas es formar estudiantes, discípulos y líderes servidores. Estoy tomando esto de una de las declaraciones de misión de mi antigua escuela, pero parece un enfoque bastante bueno. Tenemos maestros increíbles en esta archidiócesis que trabajan en todas estas categorías: formar estudiantes, discípulos, servidores y líderes. Como párroco tuve la bendición de ayudar especialmente en la categoría de formar discípulos, y déjenme decirles que la evangelización nunca ha sido tan divertida.

The many forums for evangelization with our school children include the school Mass, Eucharistic adoration, Eucharistic processions, sacramental preparation (especially confession, Communion and confirmation), and Scripture reflections.

Formation happens at Mass, but it also happens in the classroom, the lunchroom and even on the playground. the age of reason, so they can begin (at least begin) to comprehend what it means to have our sins forgiven and to receive Jesus in the Eucharist.

As a pastor, when I would first visit our children for first reconciliation preparation, I would quickly realize that while some of them were very excited for their first confession, others were pretty nervous.

It always helped when I would assure them of the good news that it is just me on the other side of the screen. Then I would catch myself and say something like, “Well actually, even better news, it’s just me and Jesus.” And I would clarify for them that it is Jesus himself who forgives their sins.

While there were always a few children who were nervous before their first confession, afterward it was a complete conversion (no pun intended). The children would exit the confessional with huge smiles, and I don’t know how many times I heard from parents that their child came up to them and asked, “When can I go again?!”

While first reconciliation preparation is always

Los numerosos foros para la evangelización con nuestros niños en edad escolar incluyen la Misa escolar, la adoración eucarística, las procesiones eucarísticas, la preparación sacramental (especialmente la confesión, la comunión y la confirmación) y las reflexiones sobre las Sagradas Escrituras. La formación ocurre en la Misa, pero también en el aula, en el comedor e incluso en el patio de recreo.

El segundo grado es una edad excelente para que los niños se interesen por la fe.

Creo que la Iglesia sabe lo que hace, ya que normalmente utilizamos este año para prepararnos tanto para la primera reconciliación como para la primera comunión. Se cree popularmente que el segundo grado es el momento en que nuestros niños alcanzan la edad de la razón, para que puedan comenzar (al menos comenzar) a comprender lo que significa que nuestros pecados sean perdonados y recibir a Jesús en la Eucaristía.

Como pastor, cuando visitaba por primera vez a nuestros niños para prepararlos para la primera reconciliación, me daba cuenta rápidamente de que, si bien algunos de ellos estaban muy emocionados por su primera confesión, otros estaban bastante nerviosos. Siempre ayudaba cuando les aseguraba la buena noticia de que solo estaba yo al otro lado de la pantalla. Luego me detenía y decía algo como: “Bueno, en realidad, una noticia aún mejor, solo estamos Jesús y yo”. Y les aclaraba que es Jesús mismo quien

rewarding, you might guess that preparations for first holy Communion were even more amazing. Again, I would visit the classrooms and ask them, “What are you receiving on First Communion Sunday?” And almost all of them would already know, they would answer, “Jesus!” My go-to follow up question would be, “Doesn’t this seem kind of weird, that Jesus would leave himself in the form of a little piece of bread for us? Why do you suppose he does this?” Many of them would answer, “Because he loves us!” That was hard to argue with, but I would expand by explaining, “Jesus loves you so much that he wants to be with you, and he knew, even while he was ascending into heaven, that in 2,000 years, Monica and Henry and Bridget and Peter would be walking the Earth, and he wanted to be close to them.” He is intimately close to us in holy Communion.

One of my favorite first holy Communion stories was a time when I stopped in the classroom the week following first holy Communion to bless the gifts the children had received on the occasion. The children were all talking about their experiences, not only of receiving the body of Christ for the first time but also receiving his precious blood for the first time.

It amazed me that they were consistently using the word blood. “What did the Blood taste like to you?”

“I liked it.” “I thought the Precious Blood was sour.”

“I thought the Precious Blood was sweet.” Not even one of them used the word wine. They didn’t just know what they were receiving, they knew who they were receiving.

Great sacramental preparation is just one of the many benefits of a Catholic school education, but it goes a long way toward forming little disciples.

Catholic schools also form great scholars and servant leaders. For 18 years I witnessed how blessed we are to have these schools in our archdiocese. And we continue to be blessed!

perdona sus pecados.

Si bien siempre había algunos niños que estaban nerviosos antes de su primera confesión, después fue una conversión total (sin juego de palabras).

Los niños salían del confesionario con grandes sonrisas y no sé cuántas veces escuché a padres que su hijo se les acercaba y les preguntaba: “¿Cuándo puedo volver a confesarme?”.

Aunque la preparación para la primera reconciliación siempre es gratificante, se podría suponer que la preparación para la primera comunión era aún más asombrosa. Una vez más, visitaba las aulas y les preguntaba: “¿Qué van a recibir el domingo de la Primera Comunión?” Y casi todos ya lo sabían, respondían: “¡Jesús!”. Mi pregunta de seguimiento habitual era: “¿No les parece un poco raro que Jesús se haya dejado a sí mismo en forma de un pedacito de pan por nosotros? ¿Por qué creen que hace esto?”. Muchos de ellos respondían: “¡Porque nos ama!”. Era difícil discutir con eso, pero yo ampliaba la explicación: “Jesús los ama tanto que quiere estar con ustedes, y sabía, incluso mientras ascendía al cielo, que en 2000 años, Mónica, Henry, Bridget y Peter estarían caminando por la Tierra, y quería estar cerca de ellos”. Él está íntimamente cerca de nosotros en la Sagrada Comunión.

Una de mis historias favoritas de la Primera Comunión fue una vez que me detuve en el salón de clases la semana después de la Primera Comunión para bendecir los regalos que los niños habían recibido en la ocasión. Todos los niños

hablaban de sus experiencias, no solo de recibir el cuerpo de Cristo por primera vez, sino también de recibir su preciosa sangre por primera vez. Me sorprendió que usaran constantemente la palabra sangre. “¿A qué te sabía la Sangre?” “Me gustó”. “Pensé que la Preciosa Sangre era agria”. “Pensé que la Preciosa Sangre era dulce”. Ni siquiera uno de ellos usó la palabra vino. No solo sabían lo que estaban recibiendo, sabían a quién estaban recibiendo.

Una buena preparación sacramental es solo uno de los muchos beneficios de la educación en una escuela católica, pero contribuye en gran medida a formar pequeños discípulos. Las escuelas católicas también forman grandes estudiantes y líderes servidores. Durante 18 años fui testigo de lo bendecidos que somos de tener estas escuelas en nuestra archidiócesis. ¡Y seguimos siendo bendecidos!

OFFICIAL Archbishop Bernard Hebda has announced the following appointment in the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis:

Effective January 15, 2025 Reverend Thomas Saucier, O.P., assigned as parochial vicar of the Church of Saint Albert the Great in Minneapolis. Father Saucier is a priest of the Dominican Friars Province of St. Albert the Great.

4 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

JANUARY 23, 2025

LOCAL

‘Extra special’ baptism

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Sophia and Riley Wern hold their infant daughter, Savannah, during an all-school Mass at St. Helena Catholic School in Minneapolis Dec. 18. Savannah was baptized during the Mass by the pastor of St. Helena, Father Marcus Milless. Sophia Wern is a middle school language arts teacher who gave birth to Savannah, her first child, on Oct. 17. “I wanted the whole school there,” said Wern, 27, who has been teaching at the school for three years.

“It was just extra special to have all the students there and then to have that much community support blessing our baby.”

When Wern shared her idea of having the baptism take place at a school Mass, Father Milless quickly and eagerly agreed. “For me, it brought great joy,” he said during an interview right after the Mass. “And then to see the kids’ expressions as they saw the little baby — how moving that was. I think it’s a great way for us to prepare for Christ’s coming at Christmas, as a school family.”

LOCAL

JANUARY 23, 2025

THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT • 5

94TH LEGISLATIVE SESSION

MCC urges lawmakers to move from compromise to collaboration

By Joe Ruff The Catholic Spirit Jason Adkins, executive director and general counsel of the Minnesota Catholic Conference (MCC) and Maggee Hangge, policy associate at MCC, invited The Catholic Spirit into the conference’s offices in St. Paul to talk about Minnesota’s 2025-2026 legislative session, which opened Jan. 14. The conference is the public policy arm of Minnesota’s Catholic bishops, which includes Archbishop Bernard Hebda and Bishops Michael Izen and Kevin Kenney of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

The interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Q Jason and Maggee, thank you

for inviting us to the MCC. As the conference defends core moral principles and fundamental rights in the public arena, it recently produced an Advocacy Report on the 93rd Minnesota Legislature.

It can be read on your website, mncatholic.org and includes more than two dozen initiatives and their progress.

Recently shared with me are five issues that have risen to a certain level of notice for the conference as the 94th legislative session begins.

One is expanding a nation-leading child tax credit that the conference championed, the Legislature passed in 2022, and that took effect in the 2023 tax year. The current tax credit is worth up to $1,750 per child, depending on income, with no cap on the number of dependent children who qualify. What might an expansion look like and why is it important?

Adkins: We’re excited to share that

a number of other states are taking this issue up. Our friends at the New York State Catholic Conference are supporting a proposal there. Other states are looking at expanding their child tax credit as well. And it really is rooted in the fundamental principle that budget and tax policy should be ordered toward making family life easier. And the reality is the cost of everything is going up.

The tax credit really helps low- and middle-income families. And there’s no cap on that credit. That’s really, really important. (The fact that) there’s no cap on the number of kids who can qualify in a family for that credit really helps them afford gas, groceries, pay the bills, allows them to put their child on a sports team, do whatever they need to do with that money. And the fundamental principle of that is that we trust families to use that money effectively.

So rather than having to go to a preferred vendor that the government chooses for you for childcare or whatever, we’re empowering families to make the decisions they need — putting more money back in their pocket to be able to afford families and do the work that they need to do to raise their children.

Q You’re looking to expand it. How might that work?

Hangge: There’s a number of ways

we could look to expand the child tax credit. The phaseout (cap) starts at about $35,000 of income for a joint (tax) filer. Maybe we could raise that to $45,000. For a family, if you’re starting that phaseout at $45,000, we’re going to be able to reach even more families in our state with that.

There are other, different levers you can pull in the tax code to expand that. But that’s one we’re looking at right now.

Q Your office has been instrumental in stopping the legalization of online sports gambling in Minnesota. Why is this effort important to Catholics and other people of goodwill, and what might happen in this legislative session?

Adkins: We’re hoping that work

can continue in 2025, as legislators are considering legalization and joining 39 other states and the District of Columbia that have already legalized sports betting in some form. What we’re really concerned about is putting a sportsbook — or a bookie, basically — in everyone’s pocket through their cell phone.

We’re concerned about the ways in which it fosters family fragmentation, creates serious economic hardship for families, and snares people with addiction, particularly our young people and our young men especially.

We’re very concerned about its impact on them and their ability to form their own families in the future.

Because of financial hardship we’re seeing already so many troubling statistics as this experiment in other states plays out.

Jason Adkins talks about the 94th legislative session Jan. 14 at the Minnesota Catholic Conference office in St. Paul.

Q The conference has partnered

with the Minnesota Family Council to stop the creation of a legal framework for commercial surrogacy contracts. More or less, the practice of women bearing children for other people to raise.

Hangge: Commercial surrogacy

has been a topic at the Capitol for a number of years. It heated up last year when it passed in the Minnesota House. What it really is, is the buying and selling of children, and that’s what we’re opposed to. You shouldn’t put a price tag on what a child costs.

Nor should you hire someone to carry a child and then strip them from that child when they’re born. They’ve only known their mother, the woman carrying them for those nine months.

And they’re going to be stripped from them right away and sold to someone else who may or may not have the best interest of that child in mind.

We have a lot of concerns about this, concerns about putting the interests of adults above the best interests of those children.

PHOTOS BY DAVE HRBACEK | THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

Maggee Hangge talks about MCC priorities Jan. 14 at the conference’s office in St. Paul.

Adkins: At the end of the day,

women are not for rent and children are not for sale.

This is an issue that Catholics really need to be paying attention to, as issues around assisted reproduction have gathered a lot of steam and public interest as of late. But people need to realize that these often

involve in vitro fertilization (IVF) and IVF cycles, eugenics in many forms, and at the end of the day, IVF and assisted reproduction often result in killing more human embryos than abortion does in a given year. This is a

PLEASE TURN TO MCC ON PAGE 8

6 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

LOCAL

JANUARY 23, 2025

Aim Higher Foundation president believes in fundamental beauty of Catholic education

By Josh McGovern The Catholic Spirit Aim Higher Foundation’s president, Ricky Austin, believes a Catholic education is a unique learning experience that can’t be found through other schooling. In fact, the St. Paul-based foundation he runs is dedicated to getting more children into Catholic elementary schools by offering $1,000 scholarships each year to qualifying students.

Austin shared his reflections ahead of National Catholic Schools Week, the annual celebration of Catholic RICKY AUSTIN education in the United States. It runs Jan. 26 through Feb. 1 this year and its theme is Catholic Schools: United in Faith and Community.

For over 150 years, Austin said, Catholic schools have provided students with access to a high-grade education; a transformative, character-focused environment; and without compromise, the benefits of a fully Catholic experience. The Aim Higher Foundation exists to provide student-based tuition assistance scholarships for low-income families in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis to receive a Catholic education.

Austin’s background in Catholic education began when he was a teacher and administrator for elementary schools in Oklahoma and Illinois. Since then, Austin has served at the University of Notre Dame’s Alliance for Catholic Education in Notre Dame, Indiana, and at the Partnership Schools in New York City.

“There’s something fundamentally beautiful about being able to get all of the things that you would want for a child in their educational experience in one place,” Austin said. “The research proves over and over and over again that this is a really rich environment that has unique benefits that you don’t find in other places. … All of these effects lead to higher graduation rates and lead to better success in college, and those benefits traverse the socioeconomic spectrum. The benefits are there for those who can afford tuition, and the benefits are there for those who can’t.”

Austin explained that since Aim Higher was founded in 2011, the number one barrier to a Catholic education has been cost. And the story of Catholic schools through history has been one of access. Saints in early America often built networks of schools. With more recent declines in the number of religious men and women, it has become more costly to staff those schools.

“As those numbers have shifted and continued to go down, Catholic schools have had to respond to create a tuition-based school model,” Austin said. “And immediately, as soon as you add tuition into the equation, you create a situation of haves and have-nots. Those (who) can afford the tuition and those who can’t. And the Catholic school system has really done a heroic job of fighting this tension, to continue to be open to all, to be the complimentary benefit that it was kind of initially created as.”

“We’ve got these amazing Catholic schools that have this amazing value proposition,” Austin said. “There’s a demand for it. We know there’s a demand for it because we see (it) in the entire financial aid application. We see 6,700 applications for our scholarships. Parents want to put their kids into these schools. They just need this financial boost to get there. And so, put all of that together and the Aim Higher Foundation was started.”

In 2017, Austin said, Aim Higher gave out 700 scholarships. By 2024, that number had increased to 2,550 scholarships. Aim Higher’s current goal is 2,800 scholarships a year. Austin said a scholarship provides an opportunity for a student and it has a “self-strengthening” effect.

“The legacy of the Church and the schools is connected to our ability to bring more people in,” Austin said. “The more scholarships we can put into the system, the more students who are going to be supported and help bring more students into schools. … The impact that Aim Higher has is on the trajectory of the lives of the people who received the scholarships, and what did they gain by attending a K-8 Catholic school? What is their experience of the world going to be like, having had this rigorous academic, character-focused and fully Catholic experience, and how do they do in high school and college? And what professions and callings do they pursue? How do they live their lives later? And what are the benefits to the overall community?”

When following this trajectory, Austin said, it doesn’t take long to see how much better and stronger communities will be, including the Church as a whole.

“We know that students and families that are connected to Catholic schools, they come back and they become the alumni and the supporters and the parishioners,” Austin said. “If we can keep that going and grow it and reverse the trends that we’ve seen in Catholic schools over the last 50 years, where enrollment continues to be a real sticking point, as it’s declined significantly, what an incredible story this community has.”

The health and vibrancy of Catholic schools is important, Austin said. “We should all care about that.”

EDUCATION STATISTICS 2024-2025 K-12 Catholic enrollment and demographics (K-8, high school, preschool from the archdiocesan Office for the Mission of Catholic Education.) uPreschool: 3,817 uK-8: 19,832 uHigh school: 7,258

2023-2024 K-12 Catholic enrollment and demographics (K-8, high school, preschool) uPreschool: 3,580 uK-8: 19,975 uHigh school: 7,329

Spiritual Life 2024-2025 u 50 schools reported that families joined the Catholic Church through

their school for a total of 193 families and nearly 400 people.

u 96% of preschool-eighth grade schools offer weekly Mass to their

student body.

u 86% of schools, preschool-12th grade, offer Eucharistic adoration

throughout the year.

Spiritual Life 2023-2024 u 52 schools reported that families joined the Catholic Church through

their school for a total of 162 families and 400 individuals

u 95% of elementary schools offer weekly Mass to their student body u 85% of all schools offer Eucharistic adoration throughout the year

Full-time and part-time K-12 employees 2024-2025 uFull-time K-12 employees: 2,963 uPart-time K-12 employees: 826

Full-time and part-time K-12 employees 2023-2024 uFull-time K-12 employees: 3,000 uPart-time K-12 employes: 668

Lumen accreditation 2024-2025 u16 schools have completed the Catholic School Study.

Lumen accreditation 2023-2024 u8 schools have completed the Catholic School Study.

Parish Catechetical Programs 2024-2025 u There are 21,580 students enrolled in the archdiocese’s 164

catechetical programs.

Parish Catechetical Programs 2023-2024 u25,833 total students enrolled in 164 programs

Sacramental Preparation 2024-2025 u4,389 students enrolled in first penance and first Eucharist u4,706 students enrolled in confirmation u4,163 volunteer catechists

Sacramental Preparation 2023-2024 u3,623 students enrolled in first penance and first Eucharist u6,727 students enrolled in Confirmation u3,486 volunteer catechists

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JANUARY 23, 2025

THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT • 7

Honoring longtime Catholic school employees DAV

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Despite stroke, St. Raphael teacher approaches 5 decades

St. Peter Claver staffer recalls attending school there

Campus minister at BSM spreads faith in classrooms, locker rooms

Story and photo by Dave Hrbacek The Catholic Spirit

Story and photo by Dave Hrbacek The Catholic Spirit

Story and photo by Dave Hrbacek The Catholic Spirit

n an early January school day, sitting at her desk in a small office adjacent to the gym at St. Peter Claver Catholic School, Lynn Wright recounted her days attending the school in the 1950s and ‘60s.

After the interview, Wright, 75, the school’s parent-student liaison and lifelong resident of St. Paul’s Rondo neighborhood, stepped through her office door and out into the gym where kindergartners were just ending physical education class.

Two of them broke off and ran up to give her a hug. Seconds later, the rest followed. She opened her arms wide and embraced them all. They lingered to soak in the love bestowed on them by a woman many students at the school call either “Grandma” or “Auntie.”

Wright does have blood relatives who go to school there, but she does not distinguish between those who are connected to her biologically and those who aren’t.

She simply loves them all. Her body moves slowly, but her heart is always turning toward the students in front of her.

“I feel blessed,” she said of the opportunity to work full time at a school she attended from first through eighth grade. “I feel like this is where I belong right now.”

Wright’s history with the school — built in 1950, the year she was born — began when she and her three siblings were students there.

“This place was special; in the neighborhood, nobody wore uniforms but us,” she said. “We used to walk to school. We were late a lot and had to go to (principal) Mother Alice’s office.

I was scared to death because I didn’t know what was going to happen.”

Now, she is the one seeing students who face disciplinary action. She uses a strategy that generally works: a hug. Why? So that “they know that I love them,” she said.

From there, whatever issue landed them in her office can be addressed. She recalled a recent incident with a boy.

“He was really angry,” she said. “I just put my arm around him and I just held him. … I could watch the anger come out of his face. And then when I saw him calming down, I started talking to him.”

He then told her why he was angry. She instructed him to sit down and read a book, which he did. A short time later, she sent him back to his classroom in a peaceful state of mind.

Wright said she thinks she has a “gift” for comforting people, children and adults alike. When she was hired at the school about 17 years ago (the school closed in 1989 and reopened in 2001) by then-principal Teresa Mardenborough, Wright helped Mardenborough during a battle with cancer that lasted a year and a half. Mardenborough retired in 2009 and died in 2012.

“She was the most spiritual woman I’ve ever been around,” said Wright, who visited Mardenborough daily in her final days and was with her when she died. “I would walk behind her sometimes (at school) because she was always praying.”

Wright, who has a great-grandson at the school, has no plans to leave either the school or the neighborhood.

“People don’t realize what we have here,” she said. “To be able to make a difference in someone’s life is a blessing.”

ith the high school hockey season in full swing, Mike Jeremiah has been following his routine of walking into the locker room carrying his Bible as he prepares to talk to the boys varsity hockey team at BenildeSt. Margaret’s School in St. Louis Park as team chaplain.

He’ll never forget the day in 2011 when he brought that same Bible into a hospital room at Hennepin County Medical Center in downtown Minneapolis to talk to a player on the junior varsity, Jack Jablonski, who had just suffered a spinal cord injury in a game and lay paralyzed.

It was one of the most difficult moments in Jeremiah’s 50-year teaching and campus ministry career at the school.

What Jeremiah, 75, showed in that hospital room confirmed the decision made by Ken Pauly, the boys varsity coach, to bring Jeremiah on board as team chaplain the previous season.

On that day, Dec. 30, 2011, Jeremiah was planning to go to the game in which Jablonski’s team was playing. But his cell phone rang before he left for the game, and he got a new set of instructions. The caller was Pauly telling him that Jablonski had suffered a serious injury during the game and Jeremiah was to go to the hospital to be with the player and his parents.

“When I got there, the lobby was filled with hockey parents,” Jeremiah recalled. “Everybody came over and hugged me.”

Hospital staff then directed him to the room in the ER occupied by Jablonski and his parents, Mike and Leslie.

“Jack was awake,” Jeremiah said. “I just held his hand and said, ‘Pal, we’re going to be OK. We’re going to make it through this. You’re not alone.’”

Jeremiah was at Jack’s side that whole night and would work with Pauly and the other coaches to help Jack and his family deal with the new reality: Jack was now a quadriplegic. As challenging as it was supporting the Jablonski family, Jeremiah had the added task of helping the varsity players, plus the rest of the BSM student body, process Jack’s life-altering injury.

First came the varsity players, whom he met with often for the rest of the 2011-2012 season — in the locker room, in the chapel, and one-on-one in his small office.

“The boys were just devastated,” Jeremiah recalled. “I remember so many of them just coming in and talking and not knowing what to do, being afraid.”

Over and over, he delivered a consistent message: “In the end, it’s not what happens to us, it’s what we do in response.”

The boys hockey players listened and this was their response: winning the 2012 state Class AA hockey championship, the first AA boys title in school history, with Jablonski and his family and friends sitting in a suite at the Xcel Energy Center in downtown St. Paul to watch the championship game, a 5-1 win over Hill-Murray School in Maplewood.

But hockey success isn’t why Jeremiah has stayed at Benilde-St. Margaret’s for 50 years. The motivation runs deeper.

“There’s something about this place,” said Jeremiah, who in addition to his chaplain duties works with students on other spiritual activities like the school’s liturgical program (he formerly has taught theology classes). “I’ve always said, ‘It’s God’s spirit that moves through these halls.’ There’s something you feel when you walk through the doors here.”

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ith lots of help, Dave Johnson climbed a set of stairs that leads to the gymnasium at St. Raphael Catholic School in Crystal on a recent school day.

It’s a familiar path, one he has traveled countless times in his 45-plus years at the school. But having a staff member walk beside him to help is new. A stroke he suffered in September 2023 has significantly reduced the mobility on his right side and he has transitioned from full time to part time.

Though his body may waver, his passion and dedication for working at the school do not. In 1978, he accepted a job as a physical education teacher at St. Raphael. Today, at 71, he is not about to let a health condition keep him from walking through the doors of the school two days a week to help with school athletics and continue serving as a chaplain in the 4 His Glory program designed to help students apply faith values to athletics. Though he missed the rest of the 2023-2024 school year as he went through a stroke recovery, he came back in the fall of this school year to continue both his career and his legacy.

Johnson, who still does not know when he will retire, said what he does at St. Raphael comes down to this: “I just love being with kids.”

He has shown it many times over the years with a simple practice. Every time he corrects a paper in his classes (he also has taught science and health), he writes a personal note to each student on the paper.

“I had a teacher at Patrick Henry High School (in north Minneapolis) where I went to high school, and her name was Mrs. Timmerman,” Johnson recalled. “She used to write notes on my paper. And I’ll never forget that (it) made such an impact.

I thought, ‘When I become a teacher, I want to be like Mrs. Timmerman.’”

He has tried to make each message personal and always adds at the end: “God bless you.”

“One thing about being a Catholic school teacher, I think it’s important to get to know the heart of your students,” he said.

“That’s what we’re called to do as Christians.”

Every time Johnson travels the hallways of the school with the help of a walker, he provides inspiration to students and staff alike. People greet this longtime teacher, who is affectionately called “Mr. J,” as they walk by, and he shoots back a beaming smile every time.

No one, even Johnson himself, is sure when his days at St. Raphael will end. His attachment to students at the school is strong. Though he has no biological children, he said “all these kids are my children.” That makes the process of deciding when to retire difficult.

With a nephew currently in the seventh grade, he is leaning toward waiting at least until the end of next school year to retire.

In the meantime, he is in a discernment process aided by a priest who has given him guidance.

“I said, ‘How do you know it’s time to leave teaching?’”

Johnson recalled asking the priest. “I’ll never forget (the priest’s answer). He said, ‘Dave, listen to our Lord. He’ll tell you when.’ ... I’m just going to listen to my heart to (know) when he tells me it’s time.”

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8 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

MCC CONTINUED FROM PAGE 5 very strong pro-life issue that we need to be concerned about.

Q Your office has pointed out the

legislation to legalize physicianassisted suicide has been introduced every year in Minnesota for more than a decade. The conference has worked with the Minnesota Alliance for Ethical Health Care to oppose the practice. What dangers would physician-assisted suicide pose to health care, and the Catholic commitment to the dignity and sanctity of all human life?

Adkins: We’re called as Catholics

to steward the gift of life. That’s why we defend the right of access to health care, basic health care that’s preventative and restorative. We have to be stewards of that gift. That’s why the Catholic Church and its ministries have always been leaders in that field. Creating the first hospitals, for example. It’s very important that we steward the gift of life, and we have to steward the gift of life at the end of life.

And there are right ways to do that, and there are wrong ways to do that.

So how do we steward the gift of life, recognizing that we’re not the author of our lives, that our lives are, in fact, a gift to be stewarded? We don’t get to choose when we come into the world, and we don’t get to choose when we go out.

Now we can make reasonable decisions about care, and that’s where we get into distinctions about accepting what’s called ordinary care, proportionate care, and declining care that’s disproportionate in terms of the benefits that it offers

LOCAL

REJECTING ONLINE SPORTS GAMBLING Concerned about the harmful effects of online sports gambling on young people, families and the broader society, Minnesota’s Catholic bishops wrote an open letter to Gov. Tim Walz and legislative leaders Jan. 14, urging them to reject proposals that would legalize the practice in the state. The letter can be read at mncatholic.org/pressreleases_and_statements.

compared to the burden. So, we can make choices. We can offer compassionate alternatives to assisted suicide. At the end of life, we have things like palliative care. In fact, pain management is not one of the top reasons why people in states where physician-assisted suicide is legal actually choose physicianassisted suicide. They’re concerned that they’re going to be a burden.

They’re going to be a burden to their families. They’re going to lose their independence. Our solution is bringing better care at the end of life.

It’s not simply about rights or autonomy or anything else. It’s about conscripting medical professionals into this decision to prematurely end your life. And we think that’s wrong.

We think it’s going to be harmful.

We think vulnerable populations are going to be affected by these decisions. When care is expensive and killing is cheap, which do we think will ultimately prevail? It’s something we all need to be concerned about, because protecting the so-called choices of a few is going to end up endangering the health care choices of everybody else.

Q You mentioned the cost. That is

something that anyone faced with a long-term health care issue knows about. Is one of the solutions to better fund palliative care, to make that a priority even in our funding, in our budgets?

Adkins: Yes, absolutely. That’s why

the Minnesota Alliance for Ethical Health Care was supportive of the creation of a palliative care committee within the Minnesota Department of Health, to find better ways to fund palliative care, to provide training and access to palliative care in Minnesota.

We need to make sure that our longterm care personnel are properly funded and that we have a good business model in place for long-term care, because if people don’t feel like they have good access to long-term care, they’re going to feel like their choices are constricted.

Q One proposal under the MCC’s

Families First Project is eliminating the state sales tax on necessary baby

items, such as cribs and car seats, and you’ve provided some terrific information about the potential impact. Any parent spending $200 on a car seat could save nearly $14 in the state sales tax; $200 on a crib, another $14; $150 on a baby swing would keep about $10 in that parent’s pocket. How are lawmakers responding to this proposal?

Hangge: 2025 is another budget

year. The legislators do have to pass a balanced budget. We’re hoping that this policy is again in the mix, because it would help people start their family or expand their family.

And it may not seem like a lot of money, but it really does add up when you add up all the expenses that a family’s going to face when they’re looking at the costs for having children.

Adkins: If I may just add that the

Families First Project was really an invitation to the broader Catholic community to work in their communities and in their parishes to enact pieces of legislation. The website familiesfirstproject.com encourages parishes to identify particular pieces of legislation and then work in their communities and with their legislators to get those passed. We have a small staff here serving the bishops of Minnesota. We can’t possibly enact all these bills.

We maybe have four or five priorities every session that we’re working on. We really need the support of the people in the pew to jump on board around those policies.

And one of the reasons is we think that should be a real thing that can bring parishes together.

Hangge: And if people have

questions about how to do that or actually see something that they want to do, we’re happy to help guide them or offer those first few steps for them and be that resource. If they see something, if they want to talk to their legislator, reach out to us. We’ll help make that connection.

Q What’s the best way to reach you?

JANUARY 23, 2025

Adkins: On our website

mncatholic.org. But if you go to

familiesfirstproject.com, it has a how-

to guide for parishes. It’s our job to give the folks in the pew the resources they need to be effective advocates.

You don’t have to be an expert. All you need to do is show up. Most of this work in terms of democracy is about showing up. But so few people are showing up. Five phone calls to a legislator, a little meeting at McDonald’s on a weekend, on a Saturday morning with 10 people from the parish, make a huge impact, and we can’t underscore that enough.

All those calls, all those emails, they do make a difference. And people really need to just show up and do the work. The Catholic Advocacy Network on our website mncatholic.org is an easy entry point to do that.

Q Prayer undergirds all that you

do. It seems to me that it’s grown: the encouragement to pray and the place to pray now is even in the Capitol building. Adoration of the Eucharist is the first Friday of each month.

Hangge: The first Friday of every

month during the session, January to May, we have adoration, held in the Governor’s Dining Room at the Capitol from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Q And people can just drive up, find a place to park and go.

Adkins: Yes. And they can find

a place to park. But if they register through our website mncatholic.org under the events tab, we can send them a parking pass. They can park in our lot. This is our third year doing it.

We’re so excited already after one — our first Friday in January, right after the new year — we had a great crowd this year. It’s people who understand the importance of praying for and interceding for our elected officials, interceding for our state, and just building the common good here. We need, especially in this crazy time of the Capitol where there is such partisan division and conflict right now, an almost evenly split Legislature in both houses, where we need people to move beyond simple compromise into collaboration. Collaboration is where you do great things and get things done. For the people of Minnesota, compromise is often fine, but it often ends with the status quo.

We need to move from compromise to collaboration. That’s where we start to see things happen. And hopefully our legislators will pick up that spirit of collaboration and move to work for the common good of all Minnesotans.

N O T I C E

Look for The Catholic Spirit advertising insert from

THE GLENN HOPKINS in some copies of this issue.

JANUARY 23, 2025

THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT • 9

NATION+WORLD Seeking prayers, grateful for support, bishop from Ukraine visits Wis., Minn.

By Joe Ruff The Catholic Spirit Bishop Vitalii Kryvytskyi of the capital city in Ukraine sought prayers and expressed gratitude for support of his war-torn country as he visited Catholic bishops, parishes, a school and nonprofit organizations in Wisconsin and Minnesota Jan. 10-16.

Among his stops were sites in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, including evening Mass Jan. 14 and a Q&A session with the congregation afterward at the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul, and a conversation Jan. 15 with Archbishop Bernard Hebda.

“I am here today to thank the American people. They tell us every day, and I always like to underline it –– every day –– they pray for Ukraine, and they are aware of what is happening in Ukraine,” said Bishop Kryvytskyi, 52, of the Diocese of Kyiv-Zhytomyr, through an interpreter during his homily at the Cathedral.

“It’s difficult to explain to you with words how tired the people of Ukraine are,” the bishop said. “But for sure, one thing that you can imagine is how tired a person’s hands are after being up all the time, just having to lift them. Remember Moses, when he was interceding for the people of Israel, when he had his hands lifted, praying for his people,” the bishop said. Moses needed the help of Aaron and Hur to keep his hands up in prayer, according to the story found in the Book of Exodus.

“I would like to use this occasion to ask you, or even to beg you, to please lift (up) your hands (again) and pray for our people,” the bishop said.

During his visit with Bishop Kryvytskyi, Archbishop Hebda said, he asked the bishop what the faithful could do to help him. “He asked primarily for our prayers, and also that we would continue to learn about the situation in his country, but most especially, about the Church in that part of the world,” the archbishop said.

Bishop Kryvytskyi also gave the archbishop a gift: an angel fashioned from a metal shell casing. “It is to remind us to pray for peace,” Archbishop Hebda said.

CHALICE OF MERCY u Founded in 2007 “to reveal God’s love

through concrete acts of service, primarily focusing on medical missions,” said Valentyna Pavsyukova, the nonprofit’s founder and leader.

u Missions have included organizing

pilgrimages for Ukrainian gynecologists to Medjugorje in Bosnia and Herzegovina to promote the dignity of life from conception to natural death. More than 1,500 doctors participated, many of whom reconsidered their practices regarding abortion. The organization also has brought Ukrainian soldiers on spiritual pilgrimages for healing and renewal.

u Since Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine DAVE HRBACEK | THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

Archbishop Bernard Hebda, left, talks with Bishop Vitalii Kryvytskyi of Ukraine during a visit to the Archdiocesan Catholic Center Jan. 15.

Bishop Kryvytskyi’s trip to the United States came only a month before the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine Feb. 24, 2022.

In an interview with The Catholic Spirit Jan. 15, the bishop explained that the capital, Kyiv, in north-central Ukraine, is a busy city of more than 3 million people, except when air raid sirens sound and people flee to shelter, or bombs strike critical infrastructure, leaving parts of the city dark and cold.

Gasoline-powered generators often keep areas of the city running, creating noise and air pollution, Bishop Kryvytskyi said through an interpreter.

“It’s not only about having lights, because to be honest, we’ve gotten used to living for long periods of time without light,” the bishop said. “But it’s mostly to keep our houses warm. So, in many moments, it’s not a matter of comfort. It’s a matter of life and death.”

While much of the fighting is in the eastern part of the country, air raids and people fleeing for safety to the central part of Ukraine, or people fleeing the country altogether, impact the capital region directly, Bishop Kryvytskyi said.

Catholic clergy and others minister to families and military personnel who “carry the wounds of the war in them,”

including emotional and physical trauma, he said.

Ministering to children of Ukraine, the Church helps organize summer camps with psychologists and others to assist young people through counseling and a respite from the war, the bishop said.

“It is a third year of this full-scale war, and Ukraine is bleeding,” Bishop Kryvytskyi said.

A major thrust of the bishop’s visit to the upper Midwest was spreading the word about a Wisconsin-based nonprofit, Chalice of Mercy, founded in 2007 and run by a Catholic native of Ukraine, Valentyna Pavsyukova, that brings medical and other supplies to Ukraine.

Since the war broke out, Pavsyukova, 41, and others with her organization have taken supplies to field hospitals and medical checkpoints on the front lines.

Bishop Kryvytskyi was the keynote speaker Jan. 11 at Chalice of Mercy’s 18th annual Ukrainian Christmas Dinner Fundraiser in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin.

Pavsyukova accompanied the bishop throughout the trip.

In addition to Archbishop Hebda, Bishop Kryvytskyi visited with Bishops Gerard Battersby of La Crosse, Wisconsin, and Robert Barron of Winona-Rochester.

Bishop Kryvytskyi also visited the office

and annexation of Crimea, and especially after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Chalice of Mercy’s focus expanded to include shipping more than $80 million worth of medical supplies to Ukraine, particularly to hospitals on the frontlines.

u For more information or to donate: chaliceofmercy.org

and clinic of the Protez Foundation in Oakdale, which provides free prosthetics for Ukrainian soldiers, children and civilians who lost limbs in the war, and MATTER in St. Louis Park, which helps launch projects such as cooperatives and hospitals to improve communities around the world. In Ukraine, MATTER provides high-quality surgical supplies.

Pavsyukova said Bishop Kryvytskyi’s U.S. trip was a tremendous gift.

“His presence helped highlight the immense suffering in Ukraine due to the ongoing war, as well as the Church’s efforts to provide aid and hope to those affected,” she said. “His participation in events like the fundraiser and his meetings with bishops, parishes and local communities deepened understanding and inspired greater solidarity and support for Ukraine’s needs,” she said.

“His (prayer and) support of Chalice of Mercy ... already provides many fruits.”

Donald Trump sworn in as 47th president, pledging crackdown on US-Mexico border

By Kate Scanlon OSV News President Donald Trump was sworn in for a second, nonconsecutive term in the White House Jan. 20, becoming the nation’s 47th president four years after he left office as its 45th.

In his inaugural address, Trump pledged to reverse what he called “America’s decline.”

“My recent election is a mandate to completely and totally reverse a horrible betrayal and all of these many betrayals that have taken place, and to give the people back their faith, their wealth, their democracy. And, indeed, their freedom,” Trump said.

Trump took a sharply critical tone of his predecessor, without naming him, but also pledged “unity” moving forward.

“We now have a government that cannot manage even a simple crisis at home, while at the same time stumbling into a continuing catalog of catastrophic events abroad,” he said. “It fails to protect our magnificent law-abiding American citizens, but provides

sanctuary and protection for dangerous criminals, many from prisons and mental institutions that have illegally entered our country from all over the world.”

Trump also addressed his own assassination attempt while campaigning in Butler, Pennsylvania, last July, arguing, “I felt then and believe even more so now that my life was saved for a reason — I was saved by God to make America great again.”

In his address, Trump confirmed his plans to sign a series of executive orders on Day One, including declaring a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border, shutting down “illegal entry,” and beginning “the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came.”

While Trump has not yet offered specifics on how he would carry out such a program, mass deportations more broadly run contrary to the Second Vatican Council’s teaching in “Gaudium et Spes” condemning “deportation” among other actions, such as abortion, that “poison human society” and give “supreme dishonor to the Creator,” a teaching St. John Paul II

affirmed in two encyclicals on moral truth and life issues.

In line with his address, among the first acts of his second term Trump signed a series of executive orders including on immigration, birthright citizenship and climate.

Executive orders are legally binding directives from the president and are published in the Federal Register.

Conversely, the term “executive actions” is broader and may include informal proposals for policy the president would like to see enacted. While it is typical for new presidents to issue some executive orders on their first day to signal certain priorities, Trump signaled plans that were broader in scope. Some of his planned orders are expected to face legal challenges.

In an oath administered by Chief Justice John Roberts, Trump pledged to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution, as that document requires.

JD Vance, previously Ohio’s senator, also took the oath of office, becoming the nation’s second Catholic vice president. Justice Brett Kavanaugh administered his oath.

CATHOLICSC

10 • JANUARY 23, 2025

Connecting and nurturing s

By Maura Keller For The Catholic Spirit

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To nurture a sense of community, foster relationships, provide a supportive network and establish a place of belonging, several Catholic schools across the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis have embraced the “house system,” reminiscent of the traditional British-based system that provides students the opportunity to connect across grades and classrooms.

Providence Academy in Plymouth opened in 2001 and at that time, the school did not have a house system. In the fall of 2006, Edward Hester, history teacher in Providence’s Upper School, was a new hire and he proposed the house system to then-Upper School Director Kevin Ferdinandt.

“The house system proposal from Mr. Hester came from his own school experience at St. Benedict’s Prep in Newark, New Jersey, which has been featured on ‘60 Minutes’ and other major media outlets for their successful house system,” said Kurt Jaeger, upper school director at Providence Academy. “While our house system is not identical to theirs, it has many similar elements and a similar goal of building culture and community.”

Providence’s single-gender houses consist of students in grades nine through 12.

Students stay in the same house all four years, allowing them to build bonds of brotherhood and sisterhood, and houses welcome new freshmen every year. The 10 male and 10 female houses are identified by Greek letters and a saint, so each house has a feast day.

The house identifiers do not change so that Providence alumni can continue to identify with their house after graduation. Each house has a faculty leader, who defers to the student leaders to manage house activities but is there to provide adult supervision.

Providence's uniform dress code is intended to create a community spirit while focusing on the student as a unique person. As students move from middle school to the upper school at Providence, the required uniform and grooming standards change, so at the start of the new school year, the house system also provides an opportunity to ensure students understand the requirements.

Each fall, Providence hosts a ceremony with the upper school student body during which house leaders induct new members from the ninth-grade class. These students are assigned in advance by administrative staff based solely on having an even distribution of students in each house.

“After induction, each house meets every morning for a homeroom of sorts where students pray, offer intentions, do announcements and often check in on initiatives they have for their community,” Jaeger said. “In addition, houses meet every Wednesday for 50 minutes for activities.”

Those activities include large group convocations to listen to a group speaker, celebrations of school achievements, service opportunities and academic support. There are a series of fun activities including pumpkin carving, sled races and decorating gingerbread houses. There are tournaments between houses

that include competitions such as flag football, and dodgeball. There is doorway decorating for Halloween and Christmas and a Thanksgiving food drive. These activities earn house points and Providence awards a house cup each year to the house that’s earned the most points.

“Providence Academy’s house system embraces camaraderie, leadership and a positive atmosphere within our community,” said Joe Spades, a senior and a male house captain. “My favorite part about house is being able to meet guys of various grades, where I otherwise would not have been able to. I love planning all the events and trying to raise school spirit while I do so. Leading a house is a great honor for me and was something I strived for as an underclassman. I was selected by my peers, and I never want to let them down.”

Providence female house captain Rachel Bartels said having a house system provides students with a close-knit community of fellow students.

“Praying together each morning also builds our house into a spiritual house,” Bartels said.

“House is a place where students can make friends with classmates as well as those in other grades they wouldn't have necessarily gotten to know personally before. That is one of my favorite things about our house system.”

As the leader of her house, Bartels has made it a priority to get to know each one of the girls.

“Growing friendships throughout each grade is so important. I remember being a freshman and looking up to my house leader at that time. She and many others in my house were like big sisters to me, and guided me through being new to high school,” Bartels said. “My goal is to create that same sisterly bond in my current house and to help the other girls feel like they have a home away from home. Leading a house at Providence Academy means fostering friendships and helping others grow in their journeys with the Lord.”

ABOVE From lef Bartels and sop Plymouth. Barte

LEFT Senior Joe Teixeira during a

PHOTOS BY DAVE

Building camaraderie When Mary Carson — middle school science teacher and leader of the house program at St. Joseph Catholic School in West St. Paul — started at the school three years ago, the school’s house system was in the first stages of conception. The school had just moved to mixed grade-level homerooms. Each teacher picked a patron saint and slowly began to build crests and identity with the students in their homerooms.

In July 2023, St. Joseph brought in Brian Sinchak from Lakewood Catholic Academy (LCA) in Cleveland to plan the school’s house program through a workshop with grant funds received from the Catholic Schools Center of Excellence (CSCOE).

“Brian had seen great success in LCA’s house program, and it gave us many ideas for how we could build our program and incorporate it here at St. Joseph’s Catholic School,” said Kyle Rickbeil, principal.

“The purpose of our house system is to meet the needs of our students in more holistic ways: to build community, connection across

disciplines, form virtuous people, and to breed joy,” Carson said. “We are about the Catholic vision: a holistic and universal scope to learning. We are whole persons: body, mind, soul and heart and our learning intersects beyond the boundaries of our classroom walls.

Our unofficial house mission statement states: ‘St. Joseph House Program exists to inspire hearts, form virtue and build community.’

The motto we start each house event with is: ‘St. Joseph middle schoolers are courageously charitable and joyful persons of integrity.’ We do all that we do within our house program to make these two statements true.”

During Carson’s second year at the school, middle school staff members brainstormed the virtues that they wanted students to leave St. Joseph with: The resulting virtues were joy, courage, integrity and charity. These virtues laid the foundation for St. Joseph’s house program — becoming the names of the houses: Alegria (Spanish for “joy”), Ujasiri (Swahili for "courage”), Ionracas (Gaelic for "integrity”), and Carita (Italian for "charity”). The staff

members also mascots, color St. Joseph’s structures: an students comp tournaments, Bake-off, etc.); responsive cla discussing a to formation con hear a brief tea it through sim and a service a students comp elementary sch “At the start experience at one of our hou toolbox’ to gra one of the hou Carson said. “ connection an lends itself to are headed som students are so all three years Every emplo school also is s four houses. T specialists act each house.

“The teache program work early years of a said. “The teac students excit

CHOOLSWEEK

THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT • 11

students with the house system INSIGHTS FROM ST. JOSEPH’S STUDENTS “Especially as a sixth grader I found it (the house system) able to provide a place where I can meet seventh and eighth graders.”

— Will Dwyer, sixth grade “I think the benefits of a house system are bringing people together, to strengthen our culture, and to have fun. I personally like the house games and competition.”

— Henry Lauth, sixth grade “I think the benefits are that kids get to join together and have fun and learn about the saints and do fun activities. I enjoy getting to know other kids that I do not usually talk to.

I also enjoy playing fun games and learning about God through the saints.”

— Josie Rogers, seventh grade “As a leader, I think that we should try to come together and just have a fun time doing it.

Leading my house is super cool because you are representing (the students).

I was voted in by my classmates.”

— Judah Dwyer, sixth grade, twin brother of Will Dwyer “My goals as a leader are to uplift others and make them welcome in our school.

For me, being a leader means giving others my ideas and representing our whole school.

It means that I should be an example for others to help them grow in their faith and love.

I was chosen by my classmates to lead.”

— Zoe Cassady, seventh grade “I think they enjoy getting a break from classes and getting to let loose, spend time with friends, some lively competition and try new things.”

— Maggie Dudkiewicz, sixth grade “(We) try to make new policies for athletics, clubs and other extracurricular activities.

You get to be with people that you usually would not see, this builds community.”

— Drew Zirnhelt, eighth grade

ft, ninth graders Alexis Larson, Elizabeth Fahnlander and Samantha McElroy, senior Rachel phomore Evelyn Mirau talk during a house meeting Jan. 14 at Providence Academy in els is the house captain.

CATHOLIC SCHOOLS WITH HOUSE SYSTEMS

e Spades, right, house captain, talks with ninth graders Ben Freshwater, left, and Antonio a morning house gathering Jan. 14.

uChesterton Academy, Hopkins

E HRBACEK | THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

uProvidence Academy, Plymouth

developed mottos, crests, rs and spirits of each house. house system has four meeting event convocation during which pete for points (four square quiz bowl, the Great St. Joseph ; house meetings, following the assroom model that involves opic or completing a task; a nvocation during which students aching or example and apply mple activities and reflection; and buddy event during which plete a work of mercy with their chool buddies. t of a middle schooler’s St. Joseph’s, they are sorted into uses by reaching into ‘St. Joseph’s ab a carabiner with the color of uses (red, yellow, green or blue),” “The carabiner symbolizes the nd community that we built and the mountain image — that we mewhere epic, together. Once orted, they stay in that house for s.” oyee at St. Joseph parish and sorted into one of the school’s The middle school teachers and as house guardians (or leaders) of

uSt. Agnes, St. Paul

ers are a huge part of making our k, especially since we are in our adopting the program,” Rickbeil chers’ excitement really gets the ted. As an example, our house

program ends each year with a House Cup, in which students compete in a number of ‘field day’ challenges in one afternoon of final competition.”

The final House Cup challenge is a lip sync battle, in which students go on stage and perform a song for the rest of the middle school.

“Last year, all of these songs involved the teachers who were moderating each house, which to me was a great sign of ownership and humility from each of our teachers,” Rickbeil said. “It was amazing to see.”

Carson said St. Joseph’s house program has been successful because it meets the needs of the entire school.

“Education cannot simply be an input/ output system but a human experience of encounter, engagement and adventure.

Students desperately desire to be known and belong and to build mixed-grade level relationships. We do that,” Carson said.

“Students need to be challenged and learn to lead others well. We do that. It provides the faculty to step into relationships with students as mentors and active agents in the formation of our young people.”

St. Joseph eighth grader and house leader Madeleine Hamiel said she thinks it is important for students to have a chance to provide input on the day-to-day life of the school and have a chance to change the school for the better.

“An aspect of house I enjoy is the monthly competitions,” Hamiel said. “These competitions give students a chance to take

uHoly Family Academy, St. Louis Park

a break from traditional schoolwork and step into a new element they may not have realized they enjoyed.”

Working toward a common good St. Hubert Catholic School in Chanhassen initiated its house system for the 20222023 school year to bring more Christian community to the school across grade levels, and to involve the teaching and support staff in the process. It was also geared at giving more leadership opportunities to middle school students.

“The goal of the house system is to promote Christian community across the school, regardless of grade level, academic or athletic ability, popularity, or other factors that people often use to separate themselves from others,” said Erich Hoffer, head of school at St. Hubert. “It also promotes teamwork, or a ‘we before me’ attitude, knowing that we are better together. Finally, it provides mentorship opportunities throughout the school for students that might not otherwise have the opportunity to work with and for others.”

At St. Hubert, students are assigned to one of the school’s nine random houses when they enter the school community. That way, Hoffer explained, each person in the house is welcomed as a valuable member and their assignments are based merely on the fact that they are persons of dignity who are now

uSt. Croix Catholic, Stillwater uSt. Hubert, Chanhassen uSt. Joseph, West St. Paul u St. Thomas Academy Middle

School, Mendota Heights

members of the school community.

There is a ceremony each year during which students are sorted into their houses and each house has a cheering section for their new members. Houses meet at least once a month and this usually surrounds an activity, contest or service project. Every faculty and staff member is included in the house system and mentors and leaders of the house work with middle school students to make sure all students are included. They are also the liaisons for the administration for all activities and contests.

“We compete for points in each activity based on cooperation, respect, project completion and following our school's virtues in action,” Hoffer said. Points are awarded by the administration for each activity.

“We believe that the house system has been successful because it includes everyone in the building, working together for the common goal of Christian community,” Hoffer said.

Leadership opportunities for middle school students improved dramatically through greater opportunities in the house system, Hoffer said. The system has brought students together into a family of students and staff, and students know they are part of something bigger than themselves, he said.

“Our faith is incorporated into each activity and house crest, motto and values, so that Christ remains at the center of all that we do,” Hoffer said.

12 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

JANUARY 23, 2025

JANUARY 23, 2025

THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT • 13

FAITH+CULTURE Celebrating Faithful Shepherd’s 25th anniversary

By Christina Capecchi For The Catholic Spirit Peggy Hirsch was there since the beginning: the dream of a Catholic school in the south metro, the initial meetings and the collaboration of a tri-parish sponsorship from St. Thomas Becket and St. John Neumann, both in Eagan, and St. Peter in Mendota.

They secured the perfect spot in Eagan nestled among 27 acres of woodlands and wetlands just off Yankee Doodle Road. And in 2000, Faithful Shepherd Catholic School opened.

The school is kicking off its 25th anniversary during Catholic Schools Week, beginning with a special Mass celebrated by Archbishop Bernard Hebda at St. John Neumann at noon on Jan. 26. It’s a sentimental milestone, said Hirsch, 59, a member of St. Peter and longtime Faithful Shepherd teacher who provides academic support to grades K-3 and facilitates worship.

Q What do you remember about those early days?

A I was a stay-at-home mom with a kindergarten son and a 2-year-old daughter. The prospect of a Catholic grade school in the southern suburbs really excited us. I was on a committee called the School Advisory Committee, and our job was to work with the newly hired principal before the school opened.

We created a student handbook and explored all sorts of questions: What would it cost? Are we going to have busing? Half-day or full-day kindergarten?

Teachers came in the beginning of August and worked for the whole month to prepare. It didn’t look like a school yet but an office building. The hallways and cafeteria were filled with boxes that had been delivered. They were willing to do everything — unboxing, assembling desks, figuring out what went where. Parents came, too.

They installed the playground. There was so much excitement. People were certain it would be a success.

Being new made us think out of the box. Interest was high for the lower grades, so we decided to open our first year as a K-6. The next year those kids went up to seventh grade, and the following year we were K-8.

Q Do you think that willingness to think outside the box is still prevalent?

A I do. We still think of ourselves as new, and everything isn’t written a certain way.

Q Being a tri-parish school brings a spirit of

collaboration. Priests of different ages from all three parishes regularly visit the students — to celebrate weekly Mass, to chat with kids during religion class, to bless students in the nurse’s office and even to jump in the gaga ball pit at recess.

A Right! We bring our faith into all aspects of

the school day. It’s such a welcoming and caring atmosphere. As a teacher, I receive so much support from my coworkers and from the administration — from planning and sharing ideas to encouragement if I’m struggling with something personally. My two kids attended Faithful Shepherd, and as a parent, I knew the smaller class sizes meant their teachers knew them well and they could make really good friends. They keep in contact with some still today.

Q Your daughter is now a Catholic school teacher.

That’s such a testament to the value of a Catholic school education. The proof is in the pudding!

A She teaches at Divine Mercy Catholic School in

Faribault. She and I love to swap stories and ideas.

It’s great to see her share her faith with her students and help them learn and grow — and it stems back to what she learned at Faithful Shepherd.

Teaching is challenging and time consuming, but it’s very rewarding. Those rewards sometimes can be seen right away, like when a student figures something out after struggling and you see it click,

DAVE HRBACEK | THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

or when you see their faith be sparked. But you don’t see all the benefits of your efforts. It’s like planting a seed, and that growth will come later in life. You never know how you’ve affected them academically, emotionally or spiritually.

Q Does seeing what can happen in a single school year fill you with hope?

A Yes! It’s amazing — look how much they grow in one year! I am very optimistic by nature.

Q You’re also witnessing leaps and bounds made by your first grandchild, who just turned 1.

A Being a grandparent is so exciting — and more

relaxing than as a parent. You get to enjoy them more because you’re not worried about everything.

Every time my granddaughter comes for a visit, we pull out a book called “Peek-A-Who?” and we read it over and over.

Q You’re a native Minnesotan. How do you lean into winter?

A I’m not a fan of the cold, but snow is beautiful. I

love seeing it on the trees — its sparkle, its crunch.

My husband, Paul, and I cross-country ski. We do it at a city or state park. When you’re skiing, you’re out enjoying what you’re seeing. You’re not thinking of it as exercise. We love being in the quiet. Things look different in the winter.

Q It awakens your senses?

A Yes! Things are asleep, renewing and resting. You

have to be patient and wait for the beauty of spring to come, knowing that cold, dark winter makes that warm, colorful spring seem so much richer. It’s easy to see God’s hand in all of it.

We look forward to each season, and we do a lot of outdoor activities for exercise. Our vacations are almost always to a state or national park. Waterfalls are our favorite. We have to find a waterfall wherever we go. Sometimes we’ll drive up to Gooseberry Falls for the day. Nature helps me connect with God. It’s where I feel closest to him. He’s in the silence.

Nature is his beauty. He made it to share with us.

Q I hear you’re quite the biker.

A Paul and I bike 400 to 500 miles every summer.

Last year we did the Mesabi Trail along the Iron Range. We do smaller rides in the evening and then on the weekend, we’ll go someplace longer. We usually will bring a lunch — sandwiches, yogurt, something simple. One year my class bought me an odometer so I could keep track of the miles.

Q There’s something satisfying about tracking it, isn’t there?

A It encourages us to keep going if we’re not getting as many miles. I write it down. My husband would say that’s crazy, but I write down a lot of things. I just keep track of things. I’m a person who likes to do that. I have our mileage on a sheet of paper, and then I compare the different years. I have a journal I’ll keep of when we go on vacations, where we go, what we did. It’s a memory piece — I don’t want to forget. I like to look back and say, “Remember when we did this?”

Q What’s your favorite hymn?

A I’m in the choir at our church. I love music! I

listen to KTIS (radio). There are so many wonderful praise and worship songs. They just speak to me! If I had to pick a favorite, of late, it would be “How Great Is Our God” by Chris Tomlin. That captures how I feel about God and nature.

Q What do you know for sure?

A I love reading The Catholic Spirit. I read it from

cover to cover. The Q&A is always interesting, and your last question is always, “What do you know for sure?” Every time I read those answers, I wonder, “What would I say?”

What I know for sure is that I’m a child of God, that I’m loved by him. I know he’s surrounded me with wonderful people who support and strengthen me. He is with me always, and he will continue to be.

14 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

FAITH+CULTURE

JANUARY 23, 2025

As ceasefire starts, first Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners return home

By Judith Sudilovsky OSV News

S

tarting at 4 p.m. on Jan. 19, crowds of Israelis arrived at what has become known as Hostages Square in the center of Tel Aviv to support the hostage families and watch the release screened on the giant screen in the square.

They hugged, cried and cheered as they watched the women being transferred from Hamas to Red Cross representatives.

In the West Bank, scenes of joy were delayed but the streets erupted in cheers as the first 90 prisoners, mostly women and teens, freed from Israeli prisons, were brought home in white Red Cross buses after midnight Jan. 20 as in the Gaza Strip first caravans of those displaced by the15-month war attempted return to their homes — of which scores are flattened — and the first 600 trucks of aid entered the strip.

The first Israelis to be released from Hamas captivity were Emily Damari, 28, and Doron Steinbrecher, 31, both of whom were taken from their homes in Kibbutz Kfar Gaza along the Gaza border in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack, and Romi Gonen, 24, who was among the 40 people kidnapped from the Nova dance festival that same day. Some 250 people were taken hostage in total on Oct. 7, and 1,200 were killed, according to Israel.

Almost 47,000 Palestinians have been killed in the ensuing war, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health in Gaza, which does not distinguish between civilian and combatant deaths.

Palestinian videos showed a stream of Gazan civilians returning through rubble to their homes in northern Gaza and armed Hamas militants celebrating perched in white pick-up trucks driving through throngs of cheering Palestinians also amid rubble.

Pope Francis expressed his gratitude for the announced ceasefire in Gaza in his Jan. 19 Angelus prayer and thanked the mediators for their efforts toward peace and in assisting to arrange the longawaited ceasefire in Gaza. The agreement will allow for the slow release of the first group of 33 Israeli hostages over the next six weeks, flow of international aid into

OSV NEWS PHOTO | DAWOUD ABU ALKAS, REUTERS

Palestinian Hamas militants hand over Emily Damari and Doron Steinbrecher, hostages held in Gaza since the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack, to members of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Gaza City, Jan. 19, 2025, as part of a ceasefire and a hostages-prisoners swap deal between Hamas and Israel.

Gaza and the release of 90 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

The agreement calls for all the hostages, both alive and dead, to be released in three phases, in exchange for 1,900 Palestinian prisoners. Hamas is still holding 94 captives, with reports varying on how many of them are still alive, which Hamas did not confirm to Israel.

According to the Israelis, Hamas is to give the names of the hostages to be released in the following weeks. Among those to be released in the first stage are Americans Keith Siegel and Sagui Dekel-Chen as well as the Bibas family including their now-2-year-old and 5-year-old-sons. Some 1,167 of the Palestinians to be released are from Gaza and were detained after Oct. 7, 2023, under emergency laws permitting arrest without

charge or trial.

Then-President Joe Biden spoke on Jan. 19 in Charleston, South Carolina, and said “Today the guns in Gaza have gone silent,” adding that “this is one of the toughest negotiations I’ve been part of.”

As joy intertwined with trepidation both in Israel and in the Palestinian territories, Pope Francis said that both Israelis and Palestinians need “clear signs of hope,” as he trusted that their political leaders with the help of the international community would yet be able to reach “the right solution” for the two states.

“May everyone be able to say: yes to dialogue, yes to reconciliation, yes to peace. And let us pray for this for dialogue, reconciliation and peace,” he said.

Catholics rally to aid LA wildfire victims

By OSV News As deadly wildfires ravaged Los Angeles, Catholics mobilized to help those affected.

Catholic Charities USA is now accepting donations to its Los Angeles Wildfire Relief initiative, which can be accessed through the agency’s website at catholiccharitiesusa.org. The organization is the official domestic relief agency of the Catholic Church in the United States.

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles has also created a dedicated fund for parishes and schools affected by the fires, with donors asked to visit

lacatholics.org/california-fires.

Archbishop José Gomez of Los Angeles has urged prayers for all those affected, saying, “My heart goes out to our neighbors who have lost their homes and livelihoods. Let’s pray for them and let’s pray for our firefighters and first responders.”

Parishes in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles have opened their doors to those displaced by the wildfires. “We’re here to help out,” said Father Tesfaldet Asghedom, pastor of Sacred Heart Church in Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, some Catholics have been calling specifically for the intercession of Our Lady of Champion, who miraculously protected a Wisconsin

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shrine during the Great Peshtigo Fire of 1871. Father Tony Stephens, rector of the National Shrine of Our Lady of Champion, offered a Mass Jan. 10 during which he prayed for rain, safety and support for firefighters, officials and victims.

Thousands of homes and other structures — including a number of churches, synagogues and other houses of worship — have been destroyed in the fires. The blazes, which broke out Jan. 7, were fueled by powerful Santa Ana winds reaching more than 60 mph, as well as extremely dry conditions that rendered vegetation quick to burn.

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JANUARY 23, 2025

FOCUSONFAITH SUNDAY SCRIPTURES | FATHER DANIEL HAUGAN

The Church as Christ’s body The Church is not a democracy. Our beliefs and our leaders, for instance, are not determined by popular vote. Yet there are many Catholics who seem to be as apathetic about their Church as millions of Americans are about politics. To such Catholics, the word “church” means either a building or the clergy.

People who view the Church in that way see their role in it as something akin to a motorist at a gas station: they drop in once a week to get their tanks filled. When they need a tune-up, they may go to confession (Advent and Lent).

Otherwise, they’re content to leave the running of the station to others.

Many Catholics like it that way — it’s easier and less bothersome.

This view of the Church was once common 50 years ago.

Increasingly, however, it’s no longer as easy as it once was to distinguish those operating the pumps at the station from the customers.

Laypeople now share many functions previously reserved for the clergy.

They are now lectors, extraordinary ministers of holy Communion, and they visit the sick and the shut-ins at home, bringing Christ in word and sacrament to them. The laity also share in Church governance through their membership on parish and pastoral councils.

These changes and others like them stem from the decisions of the bishops at the Second Vatican Council. They rediscovered an older concept of the Church, put forward by St. Paul in this weekend’s second reading (1 Cor 12:12-30): “Now you are Christ’s body, and individually parts of it. ... Indeed, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are all the more necessary.” This is strong language. What does it mean? It tells us that our relationship with Jesus Christ, and with others, is not

COMMUNION AND MISSION | FATHER JOHN PAUL ERICKSON

Union with God and one another

Communion is not just something we receive on Sundays.

In fact, our reception of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament is a sign of something else. It signifies our union with the Church as a whole body — past, present and future. This union with God and with one another is also called the kingdom of God, that mysterious phrase that Jesus himself uses to describe his mission. And this is the reason for our lives — to live in communion with God and neighbor and, while on pilgrimage to our heavenly homeland, to carry on Christ’s own mission.

I’ll be exploring the meaning and implications of this saving claim within this column. I’m grateful to The Catholic Spirit for the opportunity and I sincerely hope that readers will derive some inspiration and insight from it in their own walk with the Lord. I also hope it helps to illuminate the profound meaning of our most important ritual act as believers — the Mass, which is both the source and summit of our Catholic faith.

Whether we like it or not, human beings are social animals. This has an even deeper significance than one might think at first. Who we are — that is, our personal identity and self-understanding — is constantly being affected and shaped by others. Constantly. We are not blank slates, able to become whatever we want. To be sure, we understand that personal freedom is real — moral choices matter because we have responsibility for them. At the same time, no man is an island, as the saying goes. We are all connected, and our experience of love or its absence, our encounter with great ideas presented by fellow beings in education of various kinds, and perhaps most obviously, our ability to perpetuate the species through procreation, all depend on relationships of various kinds with other humans. We are not simply the sum of our physical parts. An essential part of who we are is the sum of our

THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT • 15

what many Catholics assume it to be. Let’s look first at our relationship with Christ Jesus.

If, as Paul tells us, the Church is Christ’s body, it means that Jesus wants us — all of us — to consider our universal call to be mission disciples, divinized by the Eucharist and sent out into the world as the mystical body of Christ. In the same way that Jesus uses his body during his time on Earth, we are to become what St. Teresa of Ávila described: “Jesus has no body now on Earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours, yours are the eyes through which he is going about doing good; yours are the hands in which he is blessing people now.”

If being a Catholic means that, then we can hardly think of ourselves as passive customers in a spiritual service station.

If baptism made us active members of Christ’s body, whom he depends on to continue his work in the world, then our relationship with Jesus Christ, who is head of the body, cannot merely be a one-to-one private affair. As members of Christ’s body, we are related not only to Christ our head, but also to other members of his body as well. As St. Paul wrote in our second reading: “If one member suffers all members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all members share in its joy.”

St. Paul’s doctrine of the Church as Christ’s body in which all the members share an intimate relationship with Christ as the head, and with one another, stems from his conversion experience, which we celebrate on Jan. 25. That great encounter with the risen Lord on the road to Damascus changed Paul’s life. Jesus did not ask him, “Why do you persecute my Church?” Rather he asked, “Why are you persecuting me?” (Acts 9:4).

The implication of those words is clear — there is no service of neighbor that is not a service to Jesus Christ. There is no neglect of sister or brother that is not neglect of Jesus Christ.

The difference between the members are differences of function. If we turn a final time to our second reading, we find St. Paul telling us that every member’s function is not only important but indispensable: “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I do not need you’ any more than the head say to the feet, ‘I do not need you.” All members of the Church are important, all are active. None is passive, all of us, as members of PLEASE TURN TO SUNDAY SCRIPTURES ON PAGE 19 relationships. Sin is a violation of relationship, both with God and with neighbor. If one accepts the claim that we are social creatures, one can understand how this reality of disintegration is so disruptive to our wholeness and happiness. Far more than just a breaking of arbitrary rules, sin turns us in on ourselves and casts us out from communion.

It closes us off from our ability to grow and to mature in communion with The Other and others. Sin is always a kind of hiding, a refusal to accept the call to walk with another. The original sin of Adam and Eve is original both in that it represents the first time our first parents said no to God but also in that it represents the essential qualities of any sin.

Every sin is anti-social, for it affects our ability to be with another.

Jesus Christ has come to reestablish that fundamental union between God and his people that was the divine plan from the beginning. This union binds us also to one another, just as children are bound together by their parents, that is, by their source. It is significant that when asked by his disciples how to pray, Jesus gives them the Our Father, a revelation not only of the great personal love of God, but also of the source of our personal union with one another.

Within the Mass the great mission of Jesus is fulfilled in mystery, only to be fully manifested at the end of the world when he returns in glory. In our common worship of our Father — through, with and in Jesus Christ — we are bound together as an offering of communion to him. In this is salvation — to be made one again. To be freed from being alone. To be liberated from both the dread and the pull of disintegration. And to rest. Forever.

And yet, while we walk as pilgrims to that place where we will see God face to face, with nothing between us, it is our mission as Christians to invite as many as we can to join us at the feast of Communion that is the Christian life and the Mass that is its source and summit. The Mass is not for us alone. It is for all people who have been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb from the slavery to sin through the waters of baptism and child-like faith. And so, our communion with God and one another propels us to go out and to make the Gospel known — to proclaim the kingdom of God, which is communion.

May our lives bear witness to a great amen to this mystery through compassion, mercy and service.

DAILY Scriptures Sunday, Jan. 26 Third Sunday in Ordinary Time Neh 8:2-4a, 5-6, 8-10 1 Cor 12:12-30 Lk 1:1-4; 4:14-21 Monday, Jan. 27 Heb 9:15, 24-28 Mk 3:22-30 Tuesday, Jan. 28 St. Thomas Aquinas, priest and doctor of the Church Heb 10:1-10 Mk 3:31-35 Wednesday, Jan. 29 Heb 10:11-18 Mk 4:1-20 Thursday, Jan. 30 Heb 10:19-25 Mk 4:21-25 Friday, Jan. 31 St. John Bosco, priest Heb 10:32-39 Mk 4:26-34 Saturday, Feb. 1 Heb 11:1-2, 8-19 Mk 4:35-41 Sunday, Feb. 2 Feast of the Presentation of the Lord Mal 3:1-4 Heb 2:14-18 Lk 2:22-40 Monday, Feb. 3 Heb 11:32-40 Mk 5:1-20 Tuesday, Feb. 4 Heb 12:1-4 Mk 5:21-43 Wednesday, Feb. 5 Memorial of St. Agatha, virgin and martyr Heb 12:4-7, 11-15 Mk 6:1-6 Thursday, Feb. 6 Memorial of St. Paul Miki and companions, martyrs Heb 12:18-19, 21-24 Mk 6:7-13 Friday, Feb. 7 Heb 13:1-8 Mk 6:14-29 Saturday, Feb. 8 Heb 13:15-17, 20-21 Mk 6:30-34 Sunday, Feb. 9 Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time Is 6:1-2a, 3-8 1 Cor 15:1-11 Lk 5:1-11

Father Erickson is parochial vicar of Nativity of Our Lord in St. Paul and interim chairman of the Archdiocesan Liturgical Commission.

KNOW the SAINTS St. Joseph of Leonessa (1556-1612) Born in Leonessa, Italy, Eufranio took the name Joseph at 18 when he became a Capuchin Franciscan. His forte was preaching and in 1587 he went as a missionary to Constantinople (Istanbul, Turkey) to minister to Christian galley slaves. After recovering from the plague, he was arrested for preaching to Muslims.

He was sentenced to death, but he survived being hanged from a gibbet with a hook through one hand and one foot. He was banished and returned to Leonessa. He lived austerely for another 20 years, sometimes preaching as many as 10 times a day, until he died of cancer. He was beatified in 1737 and canonized in 1746. His feast day is Feb. 4.

–– OSV News

16 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

JANUARY 23, 2025

COMMENTARY CATHOLIC OR NOTHING | COLIN MILLER

Spiritual effects of technology

Last month, I wrapped up an arc of analysis of our fragmented, lonely society.

We saw how, especially with the digital revolution, our whole lives end up being commodities, not just so that we can make money, but so that we can have (what we have come to call) “community” or “friends.” For this column, I want to draw some conclusions from this and point us toward how to live in the face of it.

One of the more confusing parts of the pressure to commodify ourselves is that it doesn’t feel like pressure.

This is because I usually experience the production of my “self” — my online identity — as something I positively want to do. Every click to optimize myself appears as freedom to me. And yet this is just another way that our lives are deeply monopolized by the external systems that make them possible. When turning ourselves into a commodity is the way we express our “freedom,” we have come close to defining the human being by the logic of the factory. To find our joy in selling ourselves amounts to a paradoxical kind of self-exploitation. Workers used to complain about being exploited by people like Taylor; today we Taylorize ourselves and call it self-actualization.

Healthy communities, I wrote several months back,

CATHOLIC WATCHMEN DEACON GORDON BIRD

Watchmen lead with hope

During my agribusiness career, leadership at selfimprovement seminars or CEOs at planning meetings would often say something along the lines of “hope is not a strategy.” Whether I was stacking bags of animal feed, selling nutrition or animal health programs, implementing sales and marketing campaigns and so forth, I suppose that notion applied to executing a strategic plan in a natural sense. You must do more than hope things work out; you have to make things happen to succeed.

Hope as a theological virtue, however, provides a supernatural vision of something eternal to hold onto. Tucked in between the virtues of faith and love, hope has a disposition of being on the move toward eternity. To Catholic Watchmen, as with all Christians, this future of eternal life is their home with God, the saints and angels. Through all the difficulties of the temporal world, hope is what ignites Watchmen to lead their families and friends to press on via their earthly pilgrimage to their true home in heaven.

In this “Year of Hope” as announced

by Pope Francis for this 2025 Jubilee Year, it is timely to think about this as a pilgrimage, and indeed, its challenges on the path of life to our heavenly home. Watchmen are obedient to the

are characterized by internal means of production — shared work — which produces a tangible sense of the common good, durable friendships, confident independence and sense of belonging that undergirds general psychological well-being.

If this is true, it’s no wonder that frenzied production of ourselves as part of a way of life dominated by impersonal external systems is taking a high psychological toll on us. Anxiety and depression are at an all-time high, with growing numbers of our young people affected (see Jonathan Haidt's "The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness," for instance).

We feel frustrated in our attempts to live creative, satisfying lives that express our unique personalities. We feel helpless and passive, and paradoxically exhausted and burned-out at the same time.

Much of this malaise, it seems to me, is the fairly predictable result of the cultural dynamics we’ve been describing. We feel helpless because we are helpless.

We can do almost nothing essential to our existence for ourselves. Helplessness is frightening, and so a large proportion of us are anxious much of the time. But we’re also anxious because we are always Taylorizing ourselves, extracting one more thing, getting one more thing done. So, we are always in a hurry. There is never enough. That is not a recipe for peace of soul.

We are depressed because our way of life stunts even the basic development of our God-given human potential. We are made for heroism, creative expression, and active engagement with nature and face-to-face community. Yet we spend most of our lives pushing buttons: on our phones, on our keyboards and interfacing with programs whose pre-set parameters limit our creativity. Being socialized, as we all are, in

Church and its leaders, hence, providing, protecting and leading those we care for on that path is our duty as spiritual fathers and brothers. So, it is important to differentiate natural and supernatural hope. Saints like St. Joseph — our patron saint of the Watchmen — integrated faith, hope and love in taking care of the Holy Family. He certainly had faith (trust) to follow God’s plan, yet he also had the hope (vision) to see it play out through all difficulties and challenges of that time.

The saints could certainly relate to the hope of the promise to come. They also lived in difficult worlds of trials and tribulations, understanding the joys and sorrows in life as followers of Christ. The great 20th century Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper perhaps best described our existential human condition: status viatori, or man on the way. The saints chose the supernatural hope that comes from God amid all the challenges in the world, as pilgrim leaders on the way to heaven. St. Teresa of Avila, a Carmelite contemplative, a great mystic, reformer and doctor of the Church said, “We always find that those who walked closest to Christ were those who had to bear the greatest trials.”

Certainly, walking close with Jesus as one of his disciples was difficult. The Lord sets the stage for those following him. Denying himself, taking up his cross, losing his life for the sake of Christ were the requirements (cf. Lk 9:23-26).

Christ shows the world how to live a life of self-sacrificial love. St. Thomas Aquinas, the great Christian theologian and Church doctor of the 13th century, said that the transfiguration of Jesus — found in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke — was meant to give a burst of hope to all followers of Christ making their way through life’s difficulties.

For those who kept faith in Jesus, this

consumer society, we get used to uncritically receiving standardized packages of goods and services. Whatever the grocery store sells, we eat. Whatever Netflix is showing, we watch. Whatever the doctors recommend, we do. We never learn real initiative, the ability to be confident shapers of the world we find ourselves in. Our human development is literally pressed down — “depressed” — and we feel that way. In place of real human development with others and nature we spend most of our time curating our own identities online, which is to say, thinking about ourselves. This compounds the feeling of depression, as we fall deeper into ourselves.

Christian wisdom and psychological insight agree on this point: such narcissism is not the path to happiness.

Finally, this way of life not only makes us anxious and depressed, but, perhaps paradoxically, exhausted.

Though in one sense we are passive, in another we are constantly overdone and burned-out from constantly selling ourselves. There are fewer and fewer times when we are not “on” — responding to posts, keeping up with our followers, “liking” and being “liked.” We never get to rest.

This is the world in which we live. And it is spiritually killing us. But, you say, to live differently would take a whole new economy, a new society, a regime change, a total alternative way of life. It would take a miracle.

Yes, indeed. Thankfully, the kingdom of God Jesus came preaching is nothing short of that. That’s the good news we’ll start in on next month.

Miller is the director of the Center for Catholic Social Thought at Assumption in St. Paul. He is the author of “We Are Only Saved Together: Living the Revolutionary Vision of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement,” published by Ave Maria Press.

hope was the promise to be with him in eternal glory. This illuminating moment on the mountain gave Jesus’ inner circle — Peter, James and John — a burst of supernatural hope that surpassed reason.

“All human beings live by hope … and thus the line between natural and theological virtue is not quite so clear as it might at first seem,” Richard John Neuhaus writes in “American Babylon.”

Hope is not without its dangerous opposition: despair and presumption.

Neuhaus explains the two extremes “may appear to be opposites, but on close examination, they are revealed to be two sides of the decision against hope” (p. 218). We may witness or recall examples of both despair and presumption in our life experiences: visiting the terminally ill, those with substance use disorders, prison inmates, those in broken families or those grieving the loss of a loved one. We may see tragedies or choices that cause despair and the loss of all hope. People who cannot forgive themselves and don’t trust in the mercy, the justice, the love of God, can fall into despair. At risk is their salvation.

As Catholic Watchmen, we need to protect, guide and nurture those we care for away from this despair. Once it takes over the mindset, it makes

the situation seem unforgiveable. Yet there is the other extreme Watchmen must look out for: Presumption, as Neuhaus describes, has its “smugness, a supercilious complacency incapable of entertaining the thought either of final catastrophe, as in damnation, or of radical transformation, as in final glory.”

One who presumes his eternal bliss is a cinch may learn of an eternal, hell-bent fate. Judgment, as we are taught by our Lord, is the business of God. We can plant seeds of virtue, and we hope for the best that there is a transformation of heart from either extreme.

Judas chose despair and hung himself.

Those who placed Jesus on trial and witnessed against him and led him to his crucifixion and death chose presumption. If anyone could lose hope in his outcome, it certainly could have been Peter after his three-fold denial.

Instead, he chose to hold onto the virtue of hope. And eventually he was chosen to lead Christ’s Church, which prevails against the gates of hell yet today.

Deacon Bird ministers at St. Joseph in Rosemount and All Saints in Lakeville and assists with the archdiocesan Catholic Watchmen movement. He can be reached at gordonbird@rocketmail.com.

PIVOTAL PECS “My faith and spiritual journey are so inspired as my small group discusses how we can be the hands and feet of Jesus in caring for our loved ones and those in our small group community.”

Julie Munch, St. Michael, Prior Lake Archbishop Bernard Hebda is encouraging the faithful to experience the small-group model Parish Evangelization Cells System (PECS) in their parishes. Designed to strengthen parish life through small groups and encourage parishioners to share their faith and hope in Jesus Christ with each other and then the broader community, it is having an impact. At last count, there are nearly 1,800 groups and more than 16,000 participants in 138 parishes across the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. See the opportunities to join a small group at archspm.groupvitals.com/groupfinder.

COMMENTARY

JANUARY 23, 2025

POURED OUT | JOSH McGOVERN

Take up your cork

I’ve been a reporter at The Catholic Spirit since last June. I’m honored to write a column after seven months on the job, especially one covering topics as important to me as sobriety and faith. This year, every other month, I hope to explore the intersecting points of addiction, mental health and faith and how the Lord works to bring light into that darkness. I’m no expert, but God has given me almost three good years of sobriety. I hope to be a voice for recovering addicts and their loved ones.

Prayers go out to the still-suffering addict.

When I quit drinking two years ago, on July 6, I went into the trash where I’d tossed the cork from the bottle of wine that I drank the night before. I was 24 when I woke up with my last hangover. I was sick to my stomach, brimming with regrets, and my sloppy, spilling apologies to my parents and my then-girlfriend were fastened to the Earth with one promise: I would never drink again.

My parents described my turning 21 as “handing keys to a Corvette over to a 16-year-old who just got his license.” I was a reckless drinker, always smashing the gas pedal and gunning it to blackouts. I woke up most mornings with nasty headaches, sick to my stomach and having to face my own shame and the disappointed, tired eyes of my friends and family who had to take care of me the night before.

I’d grown accustomed to mornings like that. There were too many to count. But even in those moments, my parents never stopped loving me and I knew they’d never leave me out to dry. I’d tried quitting before, but for no longer than a month. When I tried, nothing in me changed. I was just a little more miserable each week.

FAITH AT HOME LAURA KELLY FANUCCI

The power of a ‘nudge’ to pray During my husband’s years in business school, he learned about the power of the “nudge”: how to form a new habit by connecting it to a habit you already have. This practice changed my life, because (apologies to my dentist) the nudge is the only way I started flossing regularly.

He explained the nudge as we stood in our bathroom staring at the toothbrush holder. Since I was already in the habit of brushing my teeth twice a day, I simply needed to put the flosser in the space where I usually kept my toothbrush. That way, when I would automatically reach for the brush, I’d remember the nudge to floss first.

Miracle of miracles, it worked! So last night as I was flossing, I started to wonder: What if we carried over this nudge practice to our prayer lives, too?

Think about what already nudges you to pray: the daily news, a friend’s request, the sound of church bells or an ambulance racing by. Then think about the routines you do without thinking.

What could you pair with prayer, to give

On the morning of July 6, something felt different.

I had made a promise to my best friend that I’d never let her see me drunk, and I had broken that promise the night before. It was the first morning that the worst pain I felt wasn’t in my head or in my stomach. I felt it in my heart. It was the first time I ever felt like my drinking could push people I love and care about away.

She didn’t have to stay with me, and I told her so, but regardless of her decision, I made a promise to her, myself and God that I would never drink again.

When I lifted the cork out of the trash, I had to lug it out with all my strength. The weight of sobriety was set firmly in that small, brown wine-stopper. A lifetime of sobriety with only a few hours under my belt seemed impossibly far, like waking up on Dec. 26 knowing there’s 364 days until Christmas again. I needed something to hold onto, something to white-knuckle in the palm of my hand during the difficult nights soon to come, the ones that loomed ahead of me like storm clouds and the smell of rain in the air.

All I knew for sure was that if that promise didn’t mean anything, then the amends and the reconciliation I made that morning would mean nothing, too, and so I took it seriously. More seriously than the other times I said I’d quit.

Whether I knew it or not that day, I pulled out more than a cork from the trash bin. I took out a tremendous cross. It was mine to carry, and it was time to start trudging. I hoisted it on my shoulder and brought it with me wherever I went.

Bishop Robert Barron has said that to people of antiquity, the cross was a horrifying prospect. For Jesus to tell his followers to take up their own cross meant in their minds a brutal, agonizing death. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus was under such duress for what was to come that he sweated blood. Such severity, Bishop Barron argued in his article “How Strange is the Cross,” was required to offset the “awfulness of sin.”

“The problem, of course, is that we are the inheritors of centuries of artwork and piety that present the cross as a moving, or even saccharine, religious symbol,”

yourself an easy-to-remember nudge at work or home? When you open the fridge, say a quick prayer of thanks for the gift of food. When you leave the house, bless yourself with holy water by the door. When you pass a hospital, pray for the patients and caregivers. When you hug your kids or grandkids, thank God for the gift of their lives. Daily life offers us a thousand simple ways to pray.

Many people love to make New Year’s resolutions, but studies estimate that only 9% keep them. Learning about the power of the nudge can help us make — and keep — new habits. Friends have told me about laying out their workout clothes at night to remind them to exercise in the morning. Some families say a prayer in the car every time they drive past a church or cemetery. What if you looked at your daily habits and added one nudge to pray?

If you brew coffee first thing in the morning, you could pray for the workers who picked the beans — or pray for the spouse who shares the coffee pot with you. If you’re quick to click on a certain app, set your Bible next to your phone — or change the wallpaper on your home screen to remind you to pray.

I’ve made myself a few nudges like this over the years. During one season when several friends were going through difficult pregnancies, I decided to pray every time I picked up a laundry basket, to remember those who were carrying heavy burdens. Once when I got exasperated with tripping over piles of kids’ shoes by the back door, I realized I could turn my annoyance into a sneaky prayer: to pray for each child as I straightened their shoes (and reminded them to straighten their shoes in turn).

This year I’m taking a nudge from

THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT • 17 Bishop Barron wrote. “We wear it as jewelry, and we hang it on the walls of our homes as a harmless decoration. But for the men and women of Jesus’ time, death by crucifixion was not only painful; it was brutally de-humanizing, humiliating, and shaming. ...

We can clearly see why Cicero referred to crucifixion, with admirable laconicism, as the summum suplicium (the unsurpassable punishment).”

Whether literally or spiritually, taking up your cross means undertaking a difficult, seemingly impossible task, carrying the instrument of your own painful self-sacrifice. I hauled my cross to one year of sobriety, then two. Now I’m halfway to three years sober and the wooden beams that felt so heavy two years ago feel lighter. They fit in the palm of my hand. The cork is now an ornate decoration of life that I proudly wear around my neck. Now, it’s nothing more than a cork.

I haven’t been flawless. It certainly hasn’t been easy.

There were temptations, there always will be. Just as Jesus stumbled on his way to Calvary, we will, too. But as time went on, life had a way of brightening, like I was awake for a sunrise I’d usually drunkenly slept through.

I alone had to decide that this cross was something I wanted to carry. As I work in recovery from my own alcoholism it is not being done through self-will and determination, but through faith and a willingness to step out in pursuit of something greater. When I do that, Jesus lifts the heavy wood with me.

Matthew 11:30 says, “For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

On the other side of the beam, shouldering it with me, is the one who continues to give me new life. It took a long time to be grateful, but now I am, because I get to be so close to the one who carries this cross with me. To make life harder so that it can be better is not an easy choice to make, but sometimes it’s the best one.

Take up your cork and follow him.

McGovern is a reporter with The Catholic Spirit. He can be reached at mcgovernj@archspm.org

my husband again. During one Lent he started reading the Mass readings via email every day, and it’s still the first thing he does when he picks up his phone each morning. Lately I’ve been more likely to scroll through the news or social media, neither of which nudge me to pray the way that Scripture does.

So, I’m trying to build a new habit by putting my prayer book on top of my phone at night, to remember to pick it up first in the morning. How can you change your prayer habits with an easy,

unmistakable reminder? If you need a visual cue, stick a note on your mirror.

If you prefer an alarm, set a reminder on your phone. Notice where your strongest habits are and build on a nudge to pray.

And who knows: you might even start flossing every day, too.

Fanucci, a member of St. Joseph the Worker in Maple Grove, is an author, speaker and founder of Mothering Spirit, an online gathering place on parenting and spirituality at motheringspirit.com.

GLORIA PURIVS

ARCHBISHOP BERNARD HEBDA

18 • United THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT Black Catholics for Life

BISHOP ANDREW COZZENS

Archdiocese of Saint Paul & Minneapolis

COMMENTARY

s isKicking our off moment.

2025 Letwith ’s gkey o!

Opposing online sports gambling

INSIDE THE CAPITOL | MCC

Minnesota legislators are once again considering legalizing online sports gambling. While 39 other states and the District of Columbia have already done so, we remain deeply concerned about the societal harm it causes. Legalized online gambling would effectively put a bookie in everyone’s pocket, fostering addiction, economic hardship and family fragmentation.

Young people, especially young men, are particularly vulnerable to these harms. Thus, MCC will work to ensure this dangerous policy does not advance.

legislative nd register at CatholicsAtTheCapitol.org

STS:

priorities

Opposing commercial surrogacy SPONSORS:

The 2025 Minnesota legislative session has begun under unprecedented circumstances.

In the Senate, a 33-33 tie following the death of Sen. Kari Dziedzic has led to a temporary power-sharing agreement between Democrats and Republicans. Meanwhile, the House is facing gridlock. What began as a 67-67 tie has shifted to a narrow 67-66 Republican majority, after one DFL candidate was disqualified for not living in the district he sought to represent. With DFL members boycotting proceedings and pending litigation before the Minnesota Supreme Court, it is uncertain when normal legislative operations will resume in the House.

While political dynamics may change, the Minnesota Catholic Conference (MCC) remains steadfast in its principles. Regardless of who holds power, our mission to advocate for the common good and promote policies that support life, family and human dignity remains unchanged.

Here are some of the key issues we will focus on this session:

Promoting family economic security Last biennium, we helped pass a nation-leading child tax credit that eased financial burdens for low- and middle-income families. This year, we’re advocating to expand the credit by raising the income phaseout threshold to $45,000 for joint filers, ensuring more families benefit. Additionally, we support a sales tax exemption on essential baby items, providing meaningful relief for growing families.

These policies prioritize family life and address the rising costs facing parents today.

The push to legalize commercial surrogacy — a practice that commodifies children and exploits women — has been ongoing at the Capitol. Last year, it narrowly passed in the House. This year, we will continue to oppose any efforts to legalize the buying and selling of children. Women are not for rent, and children are not for sale.

Protecting nonpublic pupil aid Non-public schools educate the Minnesota public.

In fact, private schools serve nearly 100,000 Minnesota students each year. Therefore, the education of these children should be supported by our state’s public education dollars. With non-public pupil aid at risk of being cut from the governor’s budget, MCC is committed to ensuring that Minnesota kids at nonpublic schools receive the aid and support they deserve.

Opposing assisted suicide Legalizing assisted suicide endangers vulnerable populations, undermines the dignity of life, and shifts focus away from true compassionate care. MCC is committed to opposing any efforts to normalize or legalize this practice and instead advocates for expanding access to palliative care that honors the inherent worth of every person.

Those are just a few of the many topics MCC will address this session. Our advocacy relies on the support of Catholics in the pews, and together, we can make a difference. Visit mncatholic.org to join the Catholic Advocacy Network and to learn more about these issues.

Let us pray for wisdom for our legislators and for God’s guidance as we work to advance the common good in Minnesota.

Inside the Capitol is a legislative update from Minnesota Catholic Conference staff.

JANUARY 23, 2025

God responds generously to people’s shortcomings, pope says at Angelus

By Carol Glatz Catholic News Service God responds to the shortcomings of the faithful with his superabundance, Pope Francis said.

During one’s lifetime, a person may notice that something essential is missing, he said, “that we lack the strength and many things.”

“It happens when the worries that plague us, the fears that assail us or the overwhelming forces God is not of evil rob us of the taste for life, the exhilaration stingy! When he of joy and the flavor of gives, he gives a hope,” he said before praying the Angelus lot. He does not with visitors in St. Peter’s Square Jan 19. give you a little But “take note,” he said, bit, he gives you “in the face of this lack, when the Lord gives, he a lot. gives in superabundance.”

Pope Francis “It seems to be a contradiction: the more that is lacking in us, the greater the Lord’s superabundance. Because the Lord wants to celebrate with us in a feast without end,” he said.

The pope’s reflection was based on the day’s Gospel reading (Jn 2:1-11) about Jesus turning water into wine during a wedding feast in Cana.

The account “foreshadows and encapsulates the whole of Jesus’ mission” according to the prophets, he said. On the day of the coming of the Messiah, the Lord will prepare “a feast of … choice wines,” and Jesus is “the bridegroom who brings the ‘good wine.’”

When there is no more wine at the wedding in Cana, Jesus intervenes by providing plenty of exquisite wine.

“How does God respond to man’s lack? With superabundance,” the pope said. “God is not stingy! When he gives, he gives a lot. He does not give you a little bit, he gives you a lot.”

Our sincere thanks to all the principals, priests, teachers, and staff members of Catholic schools.

We’re grateful for the amazing work you do.

NE, Minneapolis. A pilgrimage in the Study Group on the Catechism of the Catholic Church millions of lives lost to abortion and the many women and events hosted by Catholic parishes and organizations. t-class relic and icon of the Martyrs — Jan. 10-May 30: 7:30-9 p.m. at St. Helena, 3204 East men wounded by abortion’s aftermath. All are invited and If the Catholic connection is not clear, please or of their canonization on Oct. 20, 43rd St., Minneapolis. All Fridays except Good Friday. welcome. For more information, please contact the Office of emphasize it in your submission. Included in our highlight the ecumenical nature of Freewill offering. Participants may come to any or all of the Marriage, Family and Youth at 651-291-4488 or visit listings are local events submitted by public JANUARY 23, 2025 THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT • 19 sources represent hope for Middle Eastern sessions. Email arChSpm.org. that could be of interest to the larger Catholic and icon will spend 10 days at each Sondag@SainthelenamplS.org. SainthelenamplS.org community. g at St. Maron.

Connect with a Cause Webinar: Cristo Rey Jesuit High Exploring the Gospel of John: A Liturgical Reading — ITEMS MUST INCLUDE: School — Jan. 23: noon-12:30 p.m. Register for Connect Wednesdays Jan. 22-Feb. 26: 7-8:30 p.m. at St. Francis uTime and date of event with a Cause, webinar hosted Monastery, Benet Road,Father Maplewood. alcoholaorfree, other30-minute addictions. Questions?

Call Jimbyat the Cabrini, 1500 Franklin Ave. SE,2675 Minneapolis.

Jan What if PARISH EVENTS CALENDAR submissions +RETREATS Catholic Community Foundation of Minnesota spotlighting we read our bodily conditions just as we do with holy 612-383-8232 or Steve at 612-327-4370. uFull street address of event MichaelJan. Joncas Martyrs of Damascus Pilgrimage: Beginning 25 will highlight passages of John that appear Scripture and lectio divina and then lift our suffering and how Cristo Rey Transition Jesuit High School serves Latino Catholic Career Group — Third Thursdays: ” Men’s Silent Jan. 10-12: DEADLINE: Noon Thursday, 14 days before the at St. Retreat Maron, 600—University Ave. NE, Minneapolis.

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Life is Good Pro-Life Speaker Series — Feb. 4-5:ONGOING T hehosted C atholiC pirit.Com /CalendarSubmiSSionS hrist. $50 deposit. kingShouSe.Com/eventS hnoj.org/career-transition-group SCHOOLS If the Catholic connection is not clear, please 6:30-8 p.m. Feb. 4, and 8:30-10 a.m. Feb. 5, at St. John the Men’s Club Pancake Breakfast — Jan. 26: Calix Society third Sundays: emphasize it in your submission. Included in our Fire on — theFirst Hill —and Third Saturdays: 5:159-10:30 p.m. Massa.m., Baptist, 680 Mill St., Excelsior. Mary Kellett is speaking a.m.-noon at St. John School, 2621 Benilde-St. McMenemy St.,Margaret’s ” Women’s8:30 Silent Weekend Retreat Open House — Jan. 9: hosted by the Cathedral of St. Paul, 239 Selby Ave., St. Paul. listings are local events submitted by public sources followed by Praise and Worship at the Cathedral of at this event.

Her 11th son, Peter, had trisomy 18.

He’s Canada.

Meal eggs, sausage and sides, plus m. Jan. 17-1Little p.m.

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St. Paul, until May 17, 2025.Potluck breakfast. Calix is the inspiration behind Partners coffee and juice.

Proceeds benefit St. John 621 First Ave. S., Buffalo. “Hope does community.

Louis Park.

BSM is happy to welcome families to campus at men,and women, family and friends supporting the has supported thousands of families who receive an a group of Gifted Belonging — Fourth Sundays: the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, visit Red Bird Night — Jan. 30: 7-8:30 p.m. claims St. Paul.

OurInformation hope is in Jesus our Open House events, which include a tour of classrooms unexpected prenatal or postnatal diagnosis.

6:30–8 p.m. at St. Matthew, 510 Hall Ave., St. Paul., and spiritual needs of recovering Catholics with alcohol or other ITEMS MUST at St. Boniface, 4025 Main St., St. Bonifacius. Red Bird arChSpm .org/INCLUDE: family or call 651-291-4489. n his life and conquered sin and death. stjohns -excelsior .org faculty, staff and current Second Fridays, 6:30-8 p.m. at at Maternity of Mary, andReiner. learning meeting with Information Night with guest speaker Anne Red settings, addictions.

Questions?

Call Jim 612-383-8232 or1414 Steve at uTime and date of event ubilee YearBird of Ministries grace to affirm belief Quilters for a Cause — First Fridays: 9 a.m.-2 p.m. at Dale St. N., St. Paul. Providing Catholic fellowship for supportsyour parents grievingstudents, the loss ofand theiran opportunity to ask questions of the BSM 612-327-4370. esus Christ.children $50 deposit. young adults with disabilities, seen and unseen. Gather St. Jerome, 380 Roselawn of any age. saintboni.org/red-bird-admissions ministries/ uFull street address of event Ave. E., Maplewood. Join other team. SCHOOLS together to share a time of prayer and reflection, followed women to make quilts to donate to local charities. Quilting The History of Wine in 6 Glasses — Jan. 31: 6:30 Nativity of Mary Preschool-8th Grade CommunityCareer Transition Group — Third Thursdays: 7:30bSmSChool .orgp.m. /admiSSionS /attend -an-open -houSe uDescription of event by games and social activities. Invite friends, and bring at Lumen Christi, 2055— Bohland Ave., St. Paul. In this new experience is not necessary but basic machine skills are Showcase and Book Fair — Jan. 26: 11:30 a.m.-18:30 p.m. a.m. at Holy Name of Jesus, 155 County Road 24, People with Memory Loss a caregiver as needed.

For more information on monthly class, we’ll take you on a journey from 6000 B.C. to today at Nativity of Mary School, 9901 E. Bloomington Freeway, helpful.information For more information, call the parish office: 651-77 Medina.

The Career Transition Group hosts speakers on uContact in case of questions p.m. at St. Odilia, 3495aVictoria N.,that will bring shape to the activities and/or volunteer opportunities, call Megan at while tasting range ofSt. wines Bloomington. All are welcome to explore our school atvarious topics to help people looking for a job or a change 1209. faCebook .

Com / profile . php ? id =100087945155707 OTHER EVENTS 612-456-1572 or email giftedandbelonging @ gmail . com . welcome, especially u The Catholic Spirit prints calendar details as story. secureanyone .myvanco.experiencing com/L-Z4D8/campaign/C-12GZ3 our Open House! Enjoy the Scholastic Book Fair, take in your career and to enhance job skills.

The meetings also submitted. eir caregivers.

Mass Natural Family Planning (NFP) — Classes teach Restorative Support for Victims-Survivors — Monthly picture theSt. photo booth, bounce on 4741 inflatables TheHospitality Masterplanafter of God: A Parish Mission Taizéwith — Jan. 10: 7-8 p.m.inat Mary of the Lake, allow time for networking withmethods others on andhow opportunities couples Church approved to achieve or for ource information available.

Call6 and 7: 6:30 p.m. (for all ages), meetAll ourare amazing teachers and more!

Tanner Kalina — Feb. both nightsAve., at White 6:30-8 Open to all victims-survivors.

Bald Eagle Bear Lake. welcome to this The Catholicp.m.

Spiritvia .comZoom. /calendarsubmissions resume review. .org/Career group postponehnoj pregnancy while-tranSition embracing-the beauty of God’s school.nativitybloomington.org Mother the Church, E., Burnsville. ail m_bronkMary, @yahoo .Comof . Stodilia .org 3333 Cliff Road Victim-survivor support group for those abused by clergy evening prayer which consists of music, Scripture and gift of sexuality. For a complete list of classes offered A Eucharistic tour through Scripture presented by Catholic Benilde-St. Margaret’s HallChapel of Honorat— Jan. 27: as adults — first Mondays. silence.

Taizé will be held in the Notre Dame Fire on the Hill —theThird Saturdays: 5:15andp.m.

Mass throughout Archdiocese of St. Paul Minneapolis, SUNDAY SCRIPTURESSupport group for relatives evangelist and nationally known speaker Tanner Kalina.

5-7 p.m. at Benilde-St. Margaret’s, 2501 Highway 100, or friends of victims of clergy St. Mary of the LakeSt.Church. archspm.and org/family or callat651-291-4489. followedvisit

by Praise Worship the Cathedral of St. Paul, CONTINUED FROM PAGE 15 sexual abuse — second mmotc.org Louis Park. The Hall of Honor is a recognition program CES+WORKSHOPS Mondays.

Victim-survivor support group — third Mondays until MayQuilters 17. for a Cause — First Fridays: 9 a.m.-2 p.m. at designed to consistently publicly honor Magnificat Night with Deacon Joseph Michalak Open Call for Sacred Art — Jan. 13: 9and a.m.-5 p.m. at the heritage Survivor Peace Circle — third Tuesdays.

Support group for St. Jerome, 380 Roselawn Ave. E., Maplewood.

Join other on: Andrew—Pudewa, Institute for of Peace, 5426 Christ’s body, are joined to intimate of BSM, salute the Monastery, dedication and2675 service of the volunteer Feb. 7: 6 p.m. at Our Lady 12th Ave. Center the Benedictine of St. Paul’s Benet Gifted and Belonging — Fourth Sundays: 6:30–8 women to make quilts to donate to local charities.

Quilting men who have been sexually abused by clergy/religious — fellowship with one another. All community, and reward the professional longevity of S., 23: Minneapolis.

An evening and ing — Jan. 7-8:30 p.m. at 2260of contemporary Road,praise St. Paul.

These artworksbsmschool will be.org available for/alumni viewing experience is not necessary but basic machine skills are p.m. at St. Matthew, 510 Hall Ave., St. Paul., and second employees. / community / hall of honor Eucharistic adoration.

Deacon Joseph Michalak, director fourth Wednesdays.

Support group for present and former together, we have a close and intimate ul. Join The St. Paul Seminary for its inArchdiocese the monastery helpful. p.m.

For more information,ofcall the parish Fridays, 6:30-8 at Maternity Mary, 1414office: Dale St. of discipleship evangelization of gallery from January through April. The relationship with the head of the employees of faith-based institutions who have experience cation lecture, featuringand Institute for for thesubmission 651-771-1209. deadline is Jan. 13. tinyurl .

Com / bdfnyewb St. Paul and Minneapolis, will give the reflection. body: Jesus Christ, our savior and our N., St. Paul.

Providing Catholic fellowship for young adults abuse in any of its many forms — second Thursdays. Visit OTHER EVENTS g founder, author and director Andrew facebook.com/profile.php?id=100087945155707 olpmn.churchcenter.com/registrations/events/2373012 Lord. with disabilities, seen and unseen.

Gather to share a time arChSpm . org / healing or contact Paula Kaempffer, outreach Youth March for Life — Jan. 22: 9 a.m.-2:30 p.m. at Connect with a Cause Webinar: Cristo Rey Jesuit seminary’s Archbishop Ireland Memorial Restorative Support for Victims-Survivors — Monthly: In his motu proprio, “Aperuit illis,” of prayer and reflection, followed by games and social High School — Jan. 23: noon-12:30 p.m.

You're invited coordinator for restorative justice and abuse prevention, at St. Agnes School, 530 Lafond Ave., St. Paul. Mark your rbadfha 6:30-8 p.m. via Zoom. Open to all victims-survivors.

Pope Francis declared this Third WORSHIP+RETREATS calendars and join usto register for Connect with a Cause, a free, 30-minute activities.

Invite friends, and bring a caregiver as needed. kaempfferp @ arChSpm . org or 651-291-4429. for a local Youth March for Life. The Victim-survivor support group for those abused by clergy Sunday of Ordinary Time to be a orkshop —Memory Feb. 1Care and Mass Mar. (formerly 1: 8 a.m.-Dementia Friendly webinarbreakouts hosted by the Catholic For moreasinformation monthlySupport activities volunteer day will include speakers, and Mass,Community as well asFoundation a adults — firstonMondays. groupand/or for relatives devotedFranciscan celebrationMeeting of study 19795 Holyoke Lakeville Secular ofand St. Leonard of Port of Minnesota spotlighting how Cristo Rey Jesuit Highopportunities, call Megan at 612-456-1572 or email Mass)Ave., — Feb. 2, April(Feb. 10, June 26: 1:30-2:30 p.m. at or friends of victims of clergy sexual abuse — second Eucharistic procession to the Capitol. morestudents information, dissemination of sacred Scripture.

School serves Latino For Catholic and families in our St. Mary ofBlvd., the Lake, 4741 Bald Eagle Ave., White Bear 18325 Minnetonka Wayzata.

Maurice Fraternity — Third Sundays: 2:15-3:45 p.m Mondays. @ Victim-survivor giftedandbelonging gmail.Com. support group — third Mondays. contact Bridget Lippert at the Office Family and This Sunday of “The Word of God” General archdiocese. ccf-mn.of orgMarriage, /events/connect A special Massministers for people living with dementia, kshop for allLake. parish liturgical at St. Olaf, 215 S. Eighth St., Minneapolis.

Survivor Peace Circle — third Tuesdays. Support group for Youth, atandlippertb@arChSpm org or 651-291-4506. should be ameeting time ofofyear when we family members and theirand caregivers. Hospitality Agape.Dinner — Feb. 1: 10 a.m.-1 p.m. at St. Peter,Naturalmen sicians, Communion ministers, membership Secular Franciscans who belong to Family (NFP):abused Classes teach couples— who Planning have been sexually by clergy/religious fellowship after Mass. stmarys-wbl.org are encouraged to strengthen our 1250 South Shore Drive, Forest Lake.

Agape Dinner for fourth Wednesdays. for present former OCIA). RSVPs for Feb. 1 are due by MCCL March for Life — Jan. 22: 12-1 p.m. at the the Fraternity of St. Leonard of Port Maurice.

Any who are Church approved methodsSupport on howgroup to achieve orand postpone bonds with our brothers and sisters all widows/widowers in the Archdiocese. Registration/ employees of faith-based institutions who have gift experienced Feb. 1 at Minnesota State Capitol, 75 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. interested in living the Gospel life in the manner of pregnancy while embracing the beauty of God’s of of God’s word. Devotion to the Bible check-in begins at 9:30, Mass at 10 a.m., a talk by Bishop CONFERENCES+WORKSHOPS abuse incomplete any of its many forms — second Thursdays.

Visit Blvd., St. Paul. Join Michael thousands of pro-life Minnesotans for a St. Francis and St. Clare are welcome. sexuality.

For a list of classes offered throughout and for march 1 at tinyurl.Com/2pa4jktu.

Izen and then a sit-down dinner to follow. Cost: should be seen as a yearlong event,

CALENDAR

Voices in Education: Andrew Pudewa, Institute for Excellence in Writing — Jan. 23: 7-8:30 p.m. at 2260 Summit Ave., St. Paul. Join The St. Paul Seminary for its latest Voices in Education lecture, featuring Institute for Excellence in Writing founder, author and director Andrew Pudewa. Inside the seminary’s Archbishop Ireland Memorial Library. tinyurl.com/4rbadfha Lectio Divina and Living with Illness: Reading the Sacred Text of Your Body — Feb. 5, Feb. 19: 10:30 a.m.-noon at The Benedictine Center of St. Paul’s

$16. Please RSVP by Jan. 24 to the parish office at 651-982-2200.

archspm.org/healing or contact Paula Kaempffer, outreach

coordinator for restorative justice and abuse prevention, at kaempfferp@archspm.org or 651-291-4429.

Secular Franciscan Meeting of St. Leonard of Port Maurice Fraternity — Third Sundays: 2:15-3:45 p.m. at St. Olaf, 215 S. Eighth St., Minneapolis. General membership meeting of Secular Franciscans who belong to the Fraternity of St. Leonard of Port Maurice. Any who are interested in living the Gospel life in the manner of St. Francis and St. Clare are welcome.

for we urgently need to grow in our knowledge and love of the sacred Scriptures of the risen Christ, who continues to speak his word and to A ofk a break bread in the community s our bout believers.

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20 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

JANUARY 23, 2025

THELASTWORD

Life of light: Bennett Kotok left a legacy of faith and hope

By Josh McGovern The Catholic Spirit

A

month before his unexpected death in January 2024, Bennett Kotok, a former St. Thomas Academy in Mendota Heights student and athlete, comforted his mother, Susan, who’d lost her father in December 2023. Bennett told her, “Life is for the living.”

Amid her loss, Bennett encouraged her to lean into her faith. Not only did that bring her peace, she said, but daily Mass and praying the rosary also helped her faith to grow. She said her faith has strengthened her through “the greatest loss a person could endure, the loss of a beloved child.”

On Jan. 21, 2024, Bennett died in his sleep at Creighton University in BENNETT KOTOK Omaha, where he was a freshman, from a rare, undiagnosed heart condition. He was 19 years old. A year later, Bennett is survived by his parents, Larry and Susan, and his brothers, Jack, 24, and Simon, 22.

“I feel like this was how he was guiding me,” Susan said. “He didn’t know that he was going to be passing, obviously, but I do feel like there was something that influenced us, that has changed us, aside from the loss of our child. … We were almost being prepared for it, with the faith and the ‘life is for the living.’ All of these things where he was saying, ‘Mom, you will see me again one day, but you need to continue on, and you need to stick to your faith and use your faith to help others.’”

Bennett’s funeral was held on Jan. 26 last year at Our Lady of Grace in Edina, where he was a longtime parishioner and student at Our Lady of Grace Catholic School. Susan said Our Lady of Grace was a great foundation for Bennett and the parish has been good to them.

On the day of the funeral, the church was full, with a thousand people in attendance and hundreds watching the livestream. Father Mark Pavlak — the former chaplain at St. Thomas Academy, now the director of vocations for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis — remembers Bennett’s funeral often during prayer. He remembers Bennett’s family in the front row, the packed church with overflow into the narthex and he remembers how present the Lord was in this moment, in which he described himself as being in both desolation and consolation.

“The night before, I was driving home from the wake, which was at the school and I remember praying out loud in my car, ‘Lord, please do not let these people lose their faith.’ My prayer was for the people not to lose their faith because that is understandably what would happen to a lot of people when someone like (Bennett) dies. … That was my one prayer. And the Lord answered that prayer in spades.”

Susan said she is frequently asked by others why she isn’t angry at God after the death of her son, who had “so much to give to the world.” She often replies that she has chosen to trust God and the plan for her life.

“It’s hard not to question when such a good person passes at a young age,” Susan said. “It’s especially hard for a parent to not think about the what-might-havebeens, meaning thinking about what he could have done with his life.”

The day after Bennett’s funeral, Susan said her daily devotional read, “God’s timing is not your timing.”

She said she believes that message is meant for everyone to lean in and trust God even on the darkest day of their lives. She said she believes God has sent many signs guiding her toward him.

Susan said that her faith has strengthened since her son’s death last year, having heard moving testimonies from Bennett’s friends, peers and even strangers who have been inspired by him to pursue a life with God. Father Pavlak said that Bennett’s girlfriend of several years is currently in OCIA and

COURTESY ST. THOMAS ACADEMY

Bennett Kotok and his mother, Susan, pose on April 3, 2023, during a school event at St. Thomas Academy in Mendota Heights. Bennett was promoted to the Top-6, a leadership rank at the school. plans to be baptized this Easter.

In the four months before his death, Susan and Father Pavlak saw Bennett’s faith life transform.

Bennett encouraged his family to pursue their faith in deeper ways. He and Father Pavlak talked about faith for hours over lunch. Bennett challenged those around him to be the best versions of themselves, including his parents, two brothers and his friends. He was described by friends and family as a confident leader, not afraid to go against societal norms.

“He was someone who was part of countless friend groups and would often seek people who were considered outliers to join whatever he was involved in,” Susan said. “He saw things in people that others overlooked and was often told he had wisdom beyond his years as a young person.”

“It seemed to me like he was really coming alive and earnestly seeking the truth, seeking out what the Church taught on so many different things,” Father Pavlak said. “I think something definitely was coming alive during those last few months before he died.”

After her son’s death, Susan said she received testimonies from Bennett’s friends and peers.

“He was reaching up and really pulling people up out of what they were involved in to help guide them toward God, toward a better life,” Susan said. “The stories are too many to count. … They feel Bennett’s presence through God in their lives. They feel a calling to deepen their faith, which is something you would think would be the opposite when a tragic situation like this happens.”

Bennett was the class president at his high school graduation on June 1, 2023, at the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul. During his speech, he told his fellow Cadets, “We are the people to shine brightly in the dark world around us. We will inspire people to be

great. We will do and be anything we desire because we are and will always be St. Thomas Academy Cadets.”

Bennett’s education greatly affected him — he sent a video to his parents thanking them for sending him to St. Thomas Academy, saying it changed his life, Susan said. He also played football and baseball at the school.

Brian Ragatz, the president of St. Thomas Academy, said of Bennett, “This was the guy that everybody wanted to be, and everybody wanted to be around.”

While Ragatz never met Bennett in person, he shared that his wife and son met Susan the night Ragatz was announced as the school’s president. Susan was attending an event during which Bennett was asked at the last minute to lead the prayer.

“You didn’t need to know Bennett to know how special he was,” Ragatz said. “The organic aspect of everything that has happened at St. Thomas, through St. Thomas, to support Bennett ... in my 20 years of Catholic education, I’ve never seen anything come close to. … There are many people in history that left a legacy who we’ll never meet. Bennett, I believe, is one of those young men that his legacy will, unfortunately, very much outlive his young life. People will be talking about who Bennett was for a very long time.”

One sign of that legacy: Ragatz said he has noticed freshmen, who never had a chance to meet Bennett, now wearing “BK” bracelets that were fashioned by a group of students after his death.

“Bennett was a man of integrity, to the point that he was a man of character. … Now the boys want to emulate that,” Ragatz said. “That’s how legacies continue to go on and shine positive light upon those that he touched and those that he can touch with the hope he brings others.”

St. Thomas Academy has dedicated batting cages currently under construction to Bennett’s name.

The Bennett Kotok Cages are expected to be finished sometime in the early spring in time for baseball season. In the cement foundation are a rosary, a Bible and a cross with Bennett’s initials.

The project is intended to honor Bennett through his passion for baseball and faith.

A year after her son’s death, Susan said, life for her is choosing light over darkness, and choosing death is not choosing a literal, physical death, but choosing anger and living away from God. On a website dedicated to Bennett, tinyurl.com/3yzj84j7, people can share stories about Bennett and learn more about his life. On the website is a verse from the Gospel of John, 1:5: “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.”

Susan said she often wonders if Bennett’s life ended when it did so the greatest good and the most impact might ripple from it.

“For anyone facing what we face, in terms of challenges in life, making a decision to trust God brings more peace than anything,” Susan said. “From ashes, beauty can rise. That’s, to me, a statement I think about every day. From the darkest beginning, tragedy, good can come. I am dedicating the rest of my life to make sure good can come from this.”

During a Mass of gratitude in December 2024, Susan said the chapel was overflowing. It was invite-only, but many more people came to continue to show support.

The intention was to gather the St. Thomas Academy class of 2023 together because, as Susan said, Bennett would want them to have a place to continue to grow in faith. The class of 2023 has stayed close to the Kotok family, Susan said, and the family feels as though the class is extended family, sharing texts, pictures and stories throughout the past year to lift the family up.

Susan said, “The number of kids that came up to my husband and (me) and just said, ‘Bennett’s life changed me in ways I can’t even describe. I think about your son every single day.’ You just kind of wonder: Is this the plan? And that’s where the trust comes in. ... We will see our son again one day, and knowing his high standards, we want to make sure we do good in his name each and every day.”